ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 


J.  G.  H.  BARRY.  D.D. 


lUN  28  1910 


\^v\ 


BV   227    .B3    1919 

Barry,    J.    G.    H.    1858-1931 

On  prayers   to   the   dead 


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/ 


ON   PRAYERS  TO 
THE  DEAD 


BY 


^^^i  Of  ?moe}^ 

J  UN  28  191P 


■,  \/ 


REV.  J.  G.  H.  BARRY,  D.D. 


NEW  YORK 

EDWIN  S.  GORHAM,  Publisher 
1919 


Copyright 

J.  G.  H.  BARRY 

1919 


ANALYSIS 

Dedicatory  Letter:  page 

I     The  Purpose  of  the  Book     .      .       5 

II  The  Need  of  a  Better  Under- 
standing of  the  Communion  of 
Saints 6 

III  The  Effects  of  our  Imperfect  Re- 

Hgious  Education    ....       9 

IV  How  the  Church  has  lost  in  the 

Past II 

V  Opposition  to  the  CathoHc  Doc- 
trine of  the  Communion  of 
Saints 20 

VI     The  True  Attitude  Toward  the 

Saints 26 

VII     The  Spirit  of  Compromise    .      .     28 
VIII     The   Cultus   of   the   Saints   and 

Unity 32 


Prayers  to  the  Dead: 

I  What  the  Church  Is  .      .      . 

II  The  Communion  of  Saints   . 

III  The   Place  of  the  Eucharist 

IV  The  Place  of  Prayer   . 

V  The  Place  of  Service 

VI     The  Full  Embrace  of  the  Com 
munion  of  Saints  . 


35 
48 

54 
58 
60 

64 


ANALYSIS 

PAGE 

VII     The  Ministry  of  Angels       .      .     68 
VIII     The   Place  of  the  Dead  in  the 

Church  and  Prayer  to  Them  .     72 

IX     How  the  Communion  of  Saints 

Must  Be  Interpreted  ...  75 

X     The  Anglican   Failure     ...  76 

XI     The  Accusation  of  Paganism     .  84 

XII     The  Hebrew  Background     .      .  97 

XIII  The  Nature  of  Primative  Invo- 

cation       108 

XIV  The    Position    of    the   Anglican 

Church 114 

XV    What  Is  to  Be  Proved     .      .      .119 

XVI     The  Testimony  of  the  Fathers  .    120 

XVII     The  End  of  the  Middle  Ages     .    129 

XVIII     The  English  Documents  .      .      .133 

XIX     The  Loss  of  Invocation  .      .      .    145 

XX     The    Practice    of    the    Oriental 

Church 147 

XXI     Conclusion 158 

Book  List 161 


DEDICATORY  LETTER 

TO 

CHARLES  C.  MARSHALL,  ESQ. 

I 

My  dear  Mr.  Marshall  :  — 

I  hope  you  will  not  be  disappointed  in 
this  book  which  you  have  so  kindly  permitted 
me  to  dedicate  to  you.  I  trust  you  have  not 
been  expecting  an  elaborate  and  learned 
treatise  on  the  Invocation  of  Saints  which 
you  could  show  with  pride  as  an  illustration 
of  the  erudition  of  the  clergy  of  the  Ameri- 
can Church.  In  the  possible  case  that  you 
have  been  expecting  something  other  than  I 
have  to  offer,  it  is  perhaps  as  well  that  I 
should  make  clear  my  purpose  in  writing. 
I  have  had  no  intention  of  producing  a  work 
of  original  research;  that  would  be  as  far 
beyond  my  reach  as  it  is  beyond  my  inten- 
tion. I  doubt  if  there  is  any  more  research 
of  value  to  be  done  on  the  subject  of  Invo- 
cation. And  in  any  case  there  is  a  sufficient 
numl^er  of  learned  treatises  in  existence  to 

5 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

supply  the  need  of  scholars,  as  the  book  list 
at  the  beginning  of  this  volume  will  show. 
There  are  also  brief  tracts  to  supply  a  cer- 
tain sort  of  popular  demand.  My  ambition 
has  been  to  produce  a  book  which  should  pre- 
sent the  essentials  of  my  subject,  and  at  the 
same  time  so  present  them  as  to  attract,  not 
the  clergy,  but  the  laity.  Such  a  book,  I 
conceive,  should  be  clear,  brief,  and  not  cum- 
bered with  technicalities.  My  humble  posi- 
tion is  that  of  a  popularizer,  attempting  to 
reach  a  public  which  is  not  much  given  to 
theological  reading.  We  of  the  clergy  are 
apt  to  blame  the  laity  because  they  do  not  do 
as  much  theological  reading  as  we  think  they 
ought,  and  then  we  do  not  take  pains  to 
provide  them  with  books  which  they  can 
read  with  ease  and  profit.  Here  is  an  at- 
tempt in  one  department  of  theology  — 
whether  success  or  failure  time  will  show. 

II 

It  has  long  been  a  growing  conviction  with 
me  that  one  of  our  principal  needs  is  a  better 
understanding  of  the  meaning  of  the  Com- 
munion of  Saints.  We  are,  as  Christians, 
hopelessly  provincial,  not  to  say  suburban. 

6 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Our  spiritual  activities  run  the  petty  round 
of  our  individual  concerns.  Prayer  means 
largely  petition  for  one's  self  and  for  our 
immediate  circle  of  interests;  it  does  not 
mean  spiritual  interests  in  communion  with 
the  whole  Body  of  Christ.  I  suppose  that 
during  the  past  eighteen  months  I  have  read 
between  thirty  and  forty  volumes  on  Prayer. 
With  the  aid  of  them  I  have  been  looking  at 
Prayer  from  a  Protestant  and  from  an 
Anglican  standpoint;  and  the  greater  part 
of  what  I  have  read  has  seemed  quite  un- 
conscious that  Prayer  meant  anything  more 
than  the  prayer  of  petition !  The  books  are 
concerned  with  Prayer  as  the  asking  for 
things,  and  with  the  attempts  to  solve  the 
intellectual  difficulties  raised  by  rationalists 
against  Prayer  as  the  asking  for  things. 
One  rises  from  the  reading  of  such  books 
with  no  consciousness  of  belonging  to  any- 
thing greater  than  a  society  of  beggars, 
clamoring  ceaselessly  at  the  doors  of  heaven. 
The  prayer  of  petition  is,  no  doubt,  an  un- 
speakable privilege ;  but  does  it  not  lose  much 
of  its  value  if  it  be  isolated  from  other  ex- 
periences of  the  prayer  life?  Does  it  not 
tend  to  become  inconceivable,  as  many  to-day 

7 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

find  it  to  be  inconceivable,  if  it  be  nothing 
more  than  a  subordinate  feature  of  our 
prayer  hfe?  In  other  words,  petitions  are 
harmonious  and  intelligible  as  experiences 
of  the  one  family  of  God  seeking  to  realize 
the  greatest  possible  fullness  of  life  as  mem- 
bers of  the  Body  in  union  with  all  its  other 
members.  But  our  feeling  that  we  can  and 
ought  to  ask  springs  from  a  sense  of  our 
union  with  our  Lord  in  His  spiritual  Body  — 
a  sense  of  union  which  we  have  attained 
through  some,  whether  understood  or  not, 
use  of  the  higher  forms  of  prayer.  Fortu- 
nately many  of  us  use  prayer  of  meditation 
and  union  in  some  elementary  way  without 
being  able  to  give  them  their  technical  name. 
It  is  chiefly  through  these  higher  forms 
of  Prayer  that  we  gain  our  consciousness  of 
the  true  meaning  of  the  Communion  of 
Saints.  Our  spirit  pushes  its  activities  out 
beyond  the  material  frontiers  of  life  and 
enters  into  communion  with  other  spirits, 
members  of  the  same  Body,  and  with  the 
Body's  Head.  These  prayers  meet  and 
touch  at  the  Body's  center  and  the  members 
of  the  Body,  whether  on  earth  or  in  the  mid- 
dle state,  or  in  heaven,  respond  to  the  ap- 

8 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

peals  of  one  another  upon  their  love  and 
sympathy  and  prayers.  The  constant  trag- 
edy is  that  so  many  of  us  pass  through  this 
universe  of  spiritual  activities,  as  the  diver 
passes  unwetted  through  the  water,  clad  in 
insulating  indifference  and  ignorance,  hold- 
ing out  no  hand  for  the  help  of  our  brethren 
and  heedless  of  their  silent  appeal  to  our 
love.  Oftentimes,  no  doubt,  as  we  stand  by 
graves,  or  go  back  in  memory  to  our  child- 
hood, or  come  upon  relics  that  we  had  laid 
away  and  long  forgotten,  there  is  the  bitter 
ache  of  an  unsatisfied  affection,  an  affection 
which  withers  and  dies  for  lack  of  expres- 
sion. If  only  we  had  learned  the  joy  of  an 
affection  which  never  misses  of  expression 
because  it  is,  where  all  our  life  is,  hid  with 
Christ  in  God. 

Ill 
It  is  strange  that  under  the  imperfect  re- 
ligious system  in  which  you  and  I  were 
brought  up,  we  should  have  been  taught  so 
much  more  of  the  activities  of  the  powers  of 
evil  than  those  of  the  powers  of  good.  The 
typical  ill-instructed  child  who  is  to  make  up 
the  membership  of  our  Church  of  the  future 

9 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

will  be  found  on  questioning  to  have  some 
elementary  notion  of  the  spiritual  powers  of 
evil  which  are  active  in  this  universe.  To 
him  the  devil  and  his  angels  are  realities. 
If  he  does  not  abandon  his  religion  as  he 
grows  up  this  conviction  will  remain.  To 
him  "  The  devil  as  a  roaring  lion  goeth  about 
seeking  whom  he  may  devour."  He  has 
some  sort  of  conception  of  "  The  world  rul- 
ers of  this  darkness  "  against  whom  his  bat- 
tle lies.  But  when  his  life  faces  the  other 
way,  it  looks  out  upon  a  universe  which  is 
for  him  empty  —  he  looks  across  vast  vacant 
spaces  till  his  thought  touches  a  far  off 
heaven  where  God  is  enthroned,  God  be- 
tween Whom  and  his  soul  there  is  nothing. 
To  him,  the  Saints  are  characters  in  Church 
history,  who  are  pictured  in  stained  glass 
windows,  wearing  queer  clothes  and  standing 
in  strange  attitudes;  who  carry  about  with 
them  the  instruments  of  their  death,  remind- 
ing him  of  how  uncomfortable  the  world 
once  was  for  Christians.  H  he  has  any 
thankfulness  stirred  in  him  by  the  pictures  of 
the  Saints  it  is,  no  doubt,  that  the  world  has 
now  become  as  comfortable  for  him  as  for 
other  men.     For  him  the  Dead  are  very 

lO 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

dead  and  he  does  not  care  to  speak  of  them 
as  the  thought  of  them  makes  him  vaguely 
uneasy.  That  he,  Hving  as  comfortably  as 
he  can  in  this  world,  has,  or  conceivably  can 
have,  any  relation  with  the  Saints  or  with  his 
own  personal  dead  never  enters  the  wildest 
fancies  of  his  dreams. 

But  if  principalities  and  powers  of  dark- 
ness beset  us,  so  do  angels  and  saints  defend 
us.  We  are  come  unto  them,  unto  the 
angels  in  their  innumerable  multitude  and  to 
the  constantly  increasing  number  of  the 
spirits  of  just  men  made  perfect;  and  we 
need,  for  the  vitality  of  our  own  spiritual 
experience,  for  the  richness  and  fullness  of 
the  life  of  the  Church  here  on  earth,  to  real- 
ize the  possibility  of  our  spiritual  contacts. 
There  is  barrenness  in  the  life  which  has  not 
its  frontiers  of  experience  coterminous  with 
the  frontiers  of  the  whole  Church.  The 
richness  of  the  life  of  the  Church  is  depend- 
ent upon  its  entering  into  its  entire  in- 
heritance. 

IV 

For  consider  how   more   than  once  the 
Church  has  lost  tremendously  through  its 

II 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

failure  to  present  to  men  the  whole  content 
of  the  Christian  revelation.  The  beliefs  and 
practices  of  Christianity  are  not  a  set  of 
arbitrary  enactments  which  conceivably 
might  have  been  something  quite  different  — 
the  belief  in  and  use  of  which  have  no  signifi- 
cance except  as  we  show  through  our  ac- 
ceptance of  them  the  submission  of  our  will 
to  God.  The  revealed  things  are  for  the 
direction  and  development  of  our  spiritual 
lives  on  their  way  to  the  vision  of  God. 
They  are  because  humanity  needs  them ;  and 
when  any  part  of  the  Church  forgets  any 
portion  of  its  divine  trust  disaster  follows. 

One  of  the  observable  results  of  this  dis- 
aster is  that  man  who  needed  the  thing  God 
provided,  being  deprived  of  that  thing  and 
conscious  of  his  need,  seeks  to  supply  it  as 
best  he  may.  Consider  this  great  fact  in  one 
or  two  instances.  The  W^estern  Church  has 
allowed  the  Sacrament  of  Unction  of  the 
Sick  to  be  perverted  or  to  fall  into  disuse. 
Rome  reduces  it  to  a  sacrament  of  the  dying 
and  practically  denies  its  healing  power. 
The  Anglican  Church,  after  providing  a 
Service  for  the  Unction  of  the  Sick  in  the 
First  Prayer  Book  of  Edward  VI,  dropped 

12 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

it  in  all  succeeding  books,  and  the  Churches 
which  have  sprung  from  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land long  followed  her  example.  We  in  the 
American  Church  debate  the  restoration  of 
Unction  in  successive  General  Conventions 
where  an  ill-informed  laity  determine  the 
fate  of  the  Sacraments.  In  the  meantime, 
some  few  of  our  Bishops,  exercising  their 
rightful  prerogatives,  bless  the  Oil  of  Unc- 
tion, and  some  few  of  the  clergy,  feeling  the 
needs  of  their  parishioners  of  more  import- 
ance than  questions  of  regularity,  procure 
this  blessed  oil  and  anoint  the  sick  —  they 
can  tell  you  with  what  results.  But  in  the 
meantime,  masses  of  Christian  people  feel 
uneasily,  as  they  read  their  New  Testaments, 
that  something  is  wrong;  that  there  ought 
to  be  available  for  them  means  for  the  heal- 
ing of  physical  ills  ministered  by  the  trustees 
of  their  religion.  They  are  not  looking  for 
miracles  to  be  performed  but  for  a  spiritual 
power  to  be  exercised  —  a  power  that  will 
meet  and  answer  their  faith,  and,  if  it  is  the 
good  will  of  God,  will  relieve  them  from 
their  bodily  pain.  When  the  Church  fails 
them  it  is  not  a  matter  of  great  wonder  that 
they  are  prepared  material  for  the  formation 

13 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

of  sects  of  various  kinds  which  have  for 
their  chief  ends  ministry  to  the  physical  ills 
of  men.  Such  fallings  away  from  the 
Church  then  engender  attempts  within  the 
Church  at  a  like  ministry  to  physical  needs, 
but  without  recourse  to  the  spiritual  means 
that  the  Catholic  religion  provides  in  the 
Sacrament  of  Unction.  The  loss  to  the 
Church  through  the  abandonment  of  its  ap- 
pointed means  of  healing  is  very  great. 

Take  another  and  more  disastrous  in- 
stance. The  Church  is  the  Body  of  Christ 
and  its  members  are  members  one  of  an- 
other. The  Church,  understanding  this 
from  the  first,  entered  upon  its  career  with 
a  distinct  comprehension  of  its  social  mis- 
sion. The  Church  in  any  place  was  a  band 
of  brethren,  responsible  for  one  another  and 
understanding  that  if  one  member  suffered 
the  other  members  necessarily  suffered  with 
him.  This  sense  of  cooperation  and  re- 
sponsibility in  great  measure  passed  away. 
It  was  not  the  size  of  the  Church  which  made 
brotherhood  in  any  active  sense  impossible, 
but  the  growing  worldliness  of  the  Church. 
The  social  action  of  the  Church  in  keeping 
society  clean  and  honest  fell  to  a  low  level. 

14 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Members  of  the  Church  have  constantly 
been  conspicuous  in  the  crass  individualism 
which  looks  on  its  own  things  and  not  on 
the  things  of  the  brother.  Scramble  for 
individual  aggrandizement  and  self -gratifica- 
tion rather  than  sense  of  responsibility  for 
the  brother  has  characterized  the  member- 
ship of  the  Church  (I  am  speaking  very  gen- 
erally), and  the  Church  as  an  organization 
has  not  energetically  acted  socially.  What 
has  been  the  result  ?  That  the  conception  of 
brotherhood  constantly  has  been  driven  to 
organize  itself  outside  the  Church.  All 
through  the  Middle  Ages  social  groups 
organized  themselves  in  separation  from  and 
in  opposition  to  the  Church.  To-day  we  see 
the  great  masses  of  the  world's  workers 
alienated  from  the  Church,  seeking  to  real- 
ize for  themselves  what  they  ought  to  have 
found  in  the  Christian  Body.  The  conse- 
quent social  danger  is  great.  The  spiritual 
disaster  is  greater. 

These  are  but  two  illustrations  of  the  gen- 
eral principle  that  when  the  Church  is  un- 
faithful to  its  mission  in  any  respect  there 
will  be  attempts  outside  the  Church  (clumsy 
and  imperfect  attempts,  no  doubt)  to  supply 

15 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

that  which  the  Church  fails  to  supply.  This 
is  strikingly  so  in  the  consequences  which 
have  followed  the  Church's  failure  to  under- 
stand the  Communion  of  Saints. 

The  growth  of  Spiritualism,  to  use  a 
clumsy  word,  in  all  its  forms,  is  one  of  the 
most  marked  phenomena  of  the  day.  As 
was  to  have  been  expected  it  has  received  an 
enormous  impulse  from  the  great  war.  It 
has  been  vastly  fortified  and  rendered  re- 
spectable by  the  adhesion  of  men  whose 
names  carry  weight  in  the  scientific  world. 
The  possibility  of  some  sort  of  communica- 
tion with  the  spirits  of  the  departed  is 
claimed  by  men  on  whose  reputation  no 
shade  of  suspicion  of  trickery  or  low  motives 
can  possibly  be  cast  to  be  an  established  fact. 
Whether  this  be  so  or  no,  I  do  not  see  how 
any  one  who  is  familiar  with  the  writings 
and  experiences  of  the  Saints,  with  all  their 
accounts  of  supernatural  communication 
narrated  almost  as  commonplaces  of  their 
spiritual  life,  can  be  very  skeptical  about  it. 
What  I  am  concerned  with  is  the  underlying 
causes  which  send,  not  so  much  scientists  to 
investigate,  as  plain  people  to  seek,  the  means 
of  communication  with  the  departed.     To 

i6 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

so  complex  a  set  of  phenomena  there  is,  to 
be  sure,  no  single  cause  to  be  assigned;  but 
there  seems  to  me  no  doubt  at  all  that  one 
influential  cause  is  to  be  found  in  the  failure 
of  large  parts  of  the  Christian  world  to  offer 
any  intelligible  account  of  the  world  beyond; 
in  its  treatment  of  death  as  a  final  S€ttlement 
of  the  soul's  affairs,  through  its  designation 
to  a  final  and  unalterable  state  of  reward  or 
punishment.  Protestantism  brusquely  swept 
aside  the  age-long  convictions  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church  with  impatient  talk  about  super- 
stition and  heathenism;  then  it  buried  its 
dead  with  the  assertion  that  their  souls  were 
now  in  heaven  or  hell  according  as  their 
deserts  might  be.  Their  state  was  fixed 
and  unalterable ;  there  was  nothing  that  could 
be  done  for  them  nor  that  they  could  do  for 
us.  We  might  not  so  much  as  follow  them 
in  our  prayers.  We  might  possibly  think  of 
the  Saints  as  praying  for  us,  but  it  was  with- 
out any  comprehension  of  our  individual 
needs.  It  not  only  denied,  as  was  right,  any 
future  probation,  but  to  all  intents  and  pur- 
poses it  left  no  place  for  future  growth.  It 
was  compelled  to  think  of  the  vast  majority 
of  humanity  as  lost.     It  was  compelled  to 

17 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

think  that  in  the  case  of  those  saved  who 
were  yet  imperfect  some  sort  of  spiritual 
miracle  was  operated  in  the  article  of  death 
whereby  they  were  fitted  for  the  immediate 
enjoyment  of  the  beatific  vision. 

This  was  not  the  doctrine  of  the  formal 
documents  of  the  Anglican  Church;  but  it 
soon  after  the  Reformation  became  the  pre- 
vailing belief  of  its  membership,  including 
the  greater  part  of  the  clergy.  It  is  to-day 
in  process  of  being  displaced  by  a  revised 
belief  in  a  Middle  State  of  purification  and 
growth  which  we  who  are  still  in  our  pil- 
grimage can  reach  by  our  prayers  and  sacri- 
fices. Protestantism,  at  length  finding  its 
own  doctrines  incredible,  has  turned  its  face 
to  the  still  less  credible  doctrine  of  universal- 
ism  ;  but  still,  so  far  as  it  is  concerned,  there 
are  no  recognized  means  of  approach  to  the 
world  beyond. 

In  the  meantime  the  harm  has  been  done ; 
and  souls  hungry  for  some  expression  of 
their  love  for  their  dead  turn  in  multitudes 
to  any  offered  channel  of  communication, 
however  unlikely.  They  not  only  seek  along 
the  sane  ways  of  scientific  investigation  but, 
finding  these  slow  in  advance  and  tentative  in 

i8 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

their  conclusions,  rush  to  any  impostor  who 
offers  for  a  moderate  fee  to  put  them  in 
communication  with  their  dead.  I  think  this 
is  the  quite  natural  result  of  a  wholly  intel- 
ligible disappointment  at  the  failure  of  the 
religion  in  which  they  have  been  brought  up 
to  give  any  credible  account  of  the  world 
beyond  or  to  provide  any  way  of  approach 
to  it. 

Among  those  educated  in  the  Catholic 
faith  there  will  be  those  who  have  failed  to 
make  a  success  in  its  application  to  life  and 
who  will  be  drawn  away  to  practices  in  the 
way  of  communication  with  the  dead  which 
are  more  thrilling  and  sensational  than  those 
which  the  Church  has  to  offer.  But,  broadly 
speaking,  the  Catholic  Christian  does  not  feel 
the  need  of  any  form  of  Spiritualism  because 
his  religion  gives  him  that  which  will  satisfy 
his  love.  In  the  practice  of  Prayers  for  the 
Dead  and  of  Prayers  to  the  Dead  he  gains 
peace  and  experiences  communion  with  other 
members  of  the  Body  of  Christ.  This  is 
infinitely  more  than  the  work  of  the  Medium 
at  the  best  estimate  of  it  has  to  offer.  One 
would  not  care  to  accept  a  few  broken 
phrases  — "  I  am  happy,"  "  All  is  well," — 

19 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

in  exchange  for  the  sense  of  dear  presences 
that  we  find  at  the  altar,  the  privilege  of 
bringing  names  precious  to  us  to  the  Heart 
of  Jesus. 

V 

In  pressing  our  rights  to  the  enjoyment  of 
all  the  privileges  of  the  Communion  of 
Saints,  it  was  to  be  expected  that  there 
should  be  roused  to  activity  all  the  forces  of 
unbelief  and  half-belief.  In  particular  we 
could  be  sure  that  the  usual  cry  of  Anglican 
obscurantism  would  be  set  up  —  the  cry  of 
danger.  One  gets  rather  bored  by  the  con- 
stant treatment  of  religion  as  being  a  dan- 
gerous affair.  If  we  were  to  read  over  all 
the  addresses  of  Anglican  bishops  for  the 
last  century  (which  God  forbid)  we  should 
probably  find  two  words  of  great  frequency 
of  occurrence  —  danger  and  crisis.  We  are 
constantly  passing  through  dangerous  crises. 
To  the  typical  Anglican  mind,  I  gather,  the 
most  dangerous  of  all  practices  is  that  of 
saying  one's  prayers  —  we  must  not  pray  for 
the  dead,  we  must  not  pray  to  the  Saints,  we 
must  not  pray  to  our  Lord  present  in  the 
Blessed  Sacrament,  else  dire  results  may 
follow ! 

20 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Now  it  was  not  a  Christian  that  bade  us 
"live  dangerously  ";  but  it  is  a  very  Chris- 
tian piece  of  advice.  It  is  much  more  Chris- 
tian than  the  Episcopal  view  of  life  that  we 
should  live  smugly  and  avoid  all  spiritual 
risks.  I  do  not  myself  see  that  the  members 
of  the  Churches  of  the  Anglican  communion 
are  endangering  their  souls'  salvation  by 
saying  too  many  prayers  —  by  saying  the 
wrong  sort  of  prayers.  I  think  their  true 
danger  is  the  danger  of  prayerlessness. 
After  all,  what  is  the  danger  of  asking  for 
the  prayers  of  Blessed  Mary,  or  of  asking 
one's  father  or  mother  to  continue  in  the 
state  where  they  are  to  bear  one's  name  be- 
fore God?  There  is  danger  of  forgetting 
our  Lord's  mediatorial  office,  we  are  told. 
But  is  there?  How  does  it  any  more  con- 
flict with  our  Lord's  mediatorial  office  to  ask 
St.  Mary  to  pray  for  me,  now  that  she  is  in 
heaven,  than  it  would  if  she  were  here  on 
earth  and  I  proffered  the  same  request? 
The  Invocation  of  the  Dead  is  nothing  more 
than  the  application  of  the  principles  of  in- 
tercessory prayer  to  the  whole  Church,  in 
heaven  and  in  the  middle  state  as  well  as  on 
earth.     If  we  think  it  profitable  to  ask  other 

21 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

people  to  pray  for  us,  why  should  we  draw 
a  line  at  the  place  where,  one  would  think, 
they  would  be  able  to  pray  the  most  effect- 
ually ? 

But  what  certainty  have  we  that  the  Saints 
hear  us  ?  I  should  answer  that  we  have  the 
guarantee  of  the  constant  belief  and  practice 
of  the  Catholic  Church  throughout  the  ages. 
That  is  the  guarantee  I  have  for  most  of  the 
things  I  believe.  I  have  no  demonstration 
of  even  the  existence  of  God  except  the 
demonstration  of  faith.  It  is  quite  contrary 
to  the  religion  that  I  hold  to  wait  for  demon- 
stration before  I  believe:  rather,  I  believe  to 
get  the  demonstration  —  and  when  I  get  it, 
it  is  not  the  demonstration  of  the  intellect 
but  the  demonstration  of  experience.  The 
experience  of  the  Catholic  Church  is  a  suffi- 
cient ground  for  my  adoption  of  the  practice 
of  Invocation.  How  Saints  know  I  do  not 
expect  to  be  told  and  I  confess  to  not  being 
very  much  interested. 

Naturally,  theologians  have  speculated  on 
this  subject  from  the  time  of  the  Fathers  on; 
but  they  were  speculating  on  the  basis  of  an 
existing  practice.  While  the  theologians 
speculated,  the  Church  prayed.     **  The  plain 

32 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

fact  is  that  people  did  as  they  were  accus- 
tomed to  do  without  concerning  themselves 
with  any  intellectual  justification,  and  the 
Church  accepted  it,  and  left  the  theologians 
to  justify  it  at  their  leisure.  The  view  ulti- 
mately accepted  was  what  we  may  call  the 
theory  of  a  divine  camera  ohscura.  The 
Saints  see  in  the  mirror  of  the  Divine  Word 
which  they  contemplate,  all  that  it  concerns 
them  to  know,  and  aid  us  through  their 
prayers  and  through  their  prayers  alone.'*  ^ 

This  is  a  quite  possible  explanation.  To- 
day, it  may  be,  we  should  be  inclined  to  think 
along  other  lines.  We  are  coming  to  see 
how  largely  mind  is  independent  upon  bodily 
limitations,  how  mind  can  reach  and  influ- 
ence mind  outside  our  usual  modes  of  com- 
munication. The  thought  appears  to  find 
its  object  at  an  indefinite  distance.  Perhaps 
it  is  along  the  lines  of  an  activity  of  the  spirit 
transcending  material  limitations  that  we 
shall  think  to  the  solution  of  our  problem. 
Let  those  speculate  who  care  to :  in  the  mean- 
time the  experience  of  the  Church  knows. 

We  have  heard  at  every  stage  of  the 
Catholic  revival  in  the  Anglican  communion 

^Goudge,  p.  24. 

23 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

the  cry  that  there  was  being  brought  back 
to  the  Church,  purified  by  the  Reformation, 
all  the  Mediaeval  superstitions  from  which  it 
had  so  happily  escaped.  This  assertion  is 
made  with  special  violence  when  it  is  a  ques- 
tion of  the  recovery  of  some  intelligible  use 
of  the  Communion  of  Saints.  I  fancy,  my 
dear  Mr.  Marshall,  that  you  and  I  are  not 
much  distressed  by  fear  of  the  inroads  of 
"  Mediaeval  superstitions  " —  there  are  so 
many  worse  things  to  worry  about !  Indeed, 
superstition  for  superstition,  I  am  inclined 
to  prefer  those  of  the  Middle  ages  to  those 
of  the  modern  mind.  I  myself  should  pre- 
fer the  superstitions  of  Paganism  to  the  lat- 
ter. Paganism  was  at  least  a  religion,  with 
some  notion  of  God  and  of  the  worship  of 
God,  and  not  a  merely  speculative  system 
whose  supreme  deity  is  limited  by  the  human 
intellect.  I  had  rather  be  a  Pagan  suckled 
in  a  creed  outworn  than  the  type  of  Chris- 
tian student  who  asserts  that  we  cannot  be- 
lieve miracles  which  are  contrary  to  the 
order  of  nature  —  the  order  of  nature  neces- 
sarily meaning  the  conclusions  of  the  human 
mind  about  nature,  up  to  date,  which  are 
actually  imposed  as  the  limits  of  conceivable 

24 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Divine  action.  I  had  rather  be  a  Mediaeval 
peasant,  kissing  the  feet  of  a  winking 
Madonna,  than  a  rationalistic  bishop  an- 
nouncing his  disbeHef  in  the  Virgin  Birth 
and  the  bodily  resurrection  of  the  Lord  Who 
died  for  him.  This  world  is  filled  with 
superstitions,  and  the  simple  superstitions 
of  the  ignorant  to  me,  at  least,  are  much  to 
be  preferred  to  the  superstitions  of  culture. 
But  in  reality  there  is  small  ground  for 
fearing  the  inroads  of  Mediaeval  supersti- 
tions. We  shall  be  quite  able  to  practice  the 
cultus  of  the  Saints  without  in  any  way  con- 
fusing that  cultus  with  the  worship  of  Al- 
mighty GOD.  Is  it  a  fact  of  observation 
that  the  worship  of  God  has  been  obscured 
in  those  parts  of  Christendom  where  the 
cultus  of  the  Saints  prevails?  Avoiding  irri- 
tating allusions  to  the  state  of  religion  in 
countries  where  the  Churches  of  the  Papal 
obedience  hold  sway, —  has  anything  that  we 
have  ever  read  about  the  Church  in  Russia, 
for  example,  suggested  a  loss  of  the  meaning 
of  Divine  worship  or  a  forgetfulness  of  the 
majesty  of  Almighty  GOD  or  of  the  infinite 
love  and  pity  of  our  Redeemer?  Might  it 
not,  perhaps,  be  not  unreasonably  suggested 

25 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

that  forgetfulness  of  the  obligations  of 
Divine  worship  is  rather  observable  in  those 
parts  of  Christendom  where  the  sacrifice  of 
the  Mass  is  denied,  where  the  Holy  Com- 
munion is  offered  to  God's  children  at  rare 
intervals,  where  churches  are  closed  and 
locked  save  for  a  few  hours  once  a  week, 
and  where  the  chief  reason  for  Christian 
people  coming  together  is  to  hear  an  address 
which  oftentimes  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
faith  of  Christ?  "I  go  to  St.  James' 
Church,"  a  business  man  was  heard  to  say; 

"  I  like  Mr.  's  sermons.     He  is  not  all 

the  time  bothering  you  about  religion."  We 
hear  it  constantly  asserted  in  that  part  of 
the  world  where  we  live  that  the  members  of 
the  Church  are  impatient  of  dogmatic  teach- 
ing. I  am  not  sure  but  that  an  inoculation 
with  the  virus  of  Medi?evalism  would  be  an 
advantageous  method  of  treatment  for  many 
parishes  of  the  Anglican  communion. 

VI 

The  attitude  toward  the  Saints  which  ap- 
pears to  me  to  be  the  true  attitude  of  Catholic 
Christians,  appears  to  others  to  *'  belong  to  a 
luxuriant   and   highly   imaginative   religion 

26 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

rather  than  to  a  religion  of  sobriety  and  re- 
straint which  ...  is  the  mark  of  the  Eng- 
lish Church  to-day."  ^  I  am  quite  free  to 
confess  that  a  ''  luxuriant  and  highly  imag- 
inative religion  "  appeals  to  me  much  more 
than  a  religion  of  "  sobriety  and  restraint." 
The  high-water  mark  of  the  latter  was,  I 
should  suppose,  reached  in  the  i8th  century 
in  England.  The  English  Church,  on  the 
one  hand,  treated  with  contempt  as  a  mere 
department  of  the  State,  and  on  the  other, 
brow-beaten  by  the  pseudo-intellectualism  of 
the  Deistic  writers,  nearly  perished.  The 
leaders  of  the  Church  before  all  things  else 
abhorred  "  enthusiasm  " :  and  the  Church  was 
rescued  from  a  dishonored  death  only  by  the 
efforts  of  enthusiasts  who  threw  sobriety  and 
restraint  to  the  winds.  It  was  the  Method- 
ists and  the  Evangelicals  who  saved  the  day 
by  bringing  about  a  spiritual  awakening. 
So  far  as  the  Churches  of  the  Anglican  com- 
munion have  got  back  to  ideals  of  "  sobriety 
and  restraint "  as  the  highest  they  can  think 
of  in  the  way  of  spiritual  expression  they 
will  be  the  better  for  an  inroad  of  '*  luxuri- 
ant and  highly  imaginative  "  Medisevalism. 

2  Stewart,  Doctrina  Romanensium,  etc.,  p.  87. 

27 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 


VII 

The  Anglican  sobriety  easily  lends  itself 
to  a  spirit  of  compromise.  It  seeks,  not  for 
ideal  expression,  but  for  working  adjust- 
ments. When  disagreements  arise  in  the 
Church  men  of  this  temperament  do  not  give 
themselves  to  the  patient  investigation  of 
truth,  feeling  that  it  is  all  important  that  they 
should  know  the  truth  and  be  made  free  by 
it;  but  they  eagerly  set  about  what  they  re- 
gard as  the  practical  treatment  of  the  situa- 
tion —  the  building  of  a  platform  so  cleverly 
fitted  together  that  all  parties  can  stand  on  it 
and  each  assert  that  it  means  what  he  means. 

In  this  matter  of  the  cultus  of  the  Saints 
such  a  platform  has  been  sought  in  what  is 
called  comprccation.  It  is  admitted  on  all 
sides  that  the  Saints  in  heaven  (we  must 
except,  of  course,  those  who  do  not  believe 
that  there  are  any  Saints  as  yet  in  heaven) 
pray  for  us.  The  early  Christian  writers 
did  not  employ  a  single  mode  of  address 
when  they  desired  to  profit  by  the  prayers  of 
the  Saints.  Sometimes  they  said  simply, 
"  Pray  for  me."  Sometimes  they  asked  God 
that  He  would  hear  the  prayers  of  the  Saints 

28 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

on  their  behalf.  This  latter  —  this  asking 
that  God  will  accept  the  prayers  of  the 
Saints  for  us  —  is  called  comprecation. 
The  early  writers  seem  not  to  have  made 
much  of  the  distinction.  In  view  of  the 
■inscriptions  in  the  Catacombs  I  do  not  be- 
lieve that  it  can  be  successfully  maintained 
that  comprecation  is  the  earlier  practice 
which  later,  by  abuse,  passed  into  invocation 
or  prayer  addressed  directly  to  the  Saint 
rather  than  to  God.  The  early  writers  seem 
to  me,  on  the  whole,  quite  indifferent  to  such 
a  distinction.  They  asked  the  Saint  for  his 
prayers,  or  they  asked  God  to  hear  the 
prayers  of  the  Saint,  as  seemed  to  them  good 
at  the  time.  Comprecation,  one  would 
imagine,  would  be  a  formal  or  liturgical 
prayer  rather  than  the  type  of  more  in- 
formal and  private  devotion.  But  some 
modern  writers  have  seized  upon  the  dis- 
tinction as  affording  a  splendid  basis  for 
compromise.  As  the  Saints  undoubtedly 
pray  for  us,  why  not  agree  to  ask  God  to 
hear  their  prayers,  and  also  agree  to  abstain 
from  any  direct  address  to  the  Saints?  So 
shall  we  avoid  all  danger  of  superstition. 
But  there  are  always  those  who  decline  to 
29 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

ascend  the  platform  of  compromise,  however 
cleverly  constructed.  The  late  Bishop  John 
Wordsworth  was  one  of  these.  Speaking 
for  others  besides  himself  he  says :  *'  They 
have  regretted  it  (comprecation)  because 
they  knew  that  this  was  the  first  step  his- 
torically, and  likely  again  to  be  the  first  step, 
toward  the  practice  of  direct  invocation. 
They  have  felt  that  such  an  indirect  method 
of  obtaining  the  prayers  of  individual  inter- 
cessors was  most  unlikely  to  satisfy  for  any 
length  of  time,  those  who  desired  such  help. 
They  felt  also  that  it  was  an  unreasonable 
thing  in  itself  to  ask  our  heavenly  Father  to 
move  some  one  else  to  move  Him  to  do  what 
we  desired." 

We  may  not  agree  with  Bp.  Wordsworth 
as  to  the  objectionability  of  comprecation; 
but  I  think  we  shall  agree  with  him  that 
when  any  one  who  has  gotten  so  far  in 
spiritual  experience  as  really  to  value  the 
prayers  of  the  Saints  is  not  at  all  likely  to 
stop  at  the  line  that  compromisers  would 
draw.  Comprecation  is,  as  I  said,  a  formal 
and  liturgical  mode  of  address,  and  lacks  the 
warmth  and  glow  which  love  inspires.     If 

30 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

our  devotion  is  kindled  by  love,  whether  love 
of  God  in  Himself,  or  of  God  as  manifested 
in  His  Saints,  it  will  seek  direct  personal  ex- 
pression: the  utterances  of  love  are  apt  to 
pass  beyond  sobriety  and  restraint  and  run 
to  imaginative  and  luxuriant  modes  of  ad- 
dress. Unless  the  Saints  are  very  real  per- 
sons to  us,  we  shall  not  want  to  speak  to 
them  at  all.  Unless  our  own  faithful  de- 
parted are  conceived  as  truly  living  in  Christ 
with  a  love  that  yearns  backward  to  us,  we 
shall  prefer  to  forget  them.  We  may  be 
silent  or  we  may  speak ;  the  one  thing  we  are 
not  likely  to  do  is  to  be  careful  to  be  sober 
and  restrained. 

This  is  a  very  long  letter,  my  dear  Mr. 
Marshall,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  the  time 
has  come  for  some  one  to  speak  out  in  these 
matters.  If  it  turns  out  that  the  speaking 
meets  no  sympathetic  answer,  one  will  not 
be  overmuch  surprised.  But  I  am  con- 
vinced that  many  in  the  Church  are  thinking 
about  these  high  matters  and  are  wanting  to 
know  what  others  think ;  and  especially  are 
wanting  some  guide  to  the  thought  of  the 
Church.     I  have  done  my  best  to  be  a  guide ; 

31 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

but  perhaps  my  best  will  have  been  the  point- 
ing to  the  existence  of  other  and  more  com- 
petent guides  than  myself. 

VIII 

These  matters  must  be  discussed,  as  all 
Christian  teaching  must  be  discussed,  as  a 
preliminary  to  the  coming  attempts  at  Church 
Unity.  You  and  I  are,  as  I  suppose  all 
thinking  Churchmen  must  be,  tremendously 
interested  in  the  subject  of  Unity.  We  are 
convinced,  I  think,  that  any  attempts  to 
attain  Unity  which  are  conditioned  upon 
silence  as  to  our  deepest  convictions,  which 
are  advanced  by  the  facile  process  of  shuf- 
fling out  of  sight  the  vital  matters  on  which 
we  differ  from  one  another,  and  the  produc- 
tion of  a  compromise  platform,  are  futile. 
There  can  be  no  Church  Unity  with  those 
who  neither  understand  what  the  Church  is 
nor  what  Unity  is ;  who  are  anxious  to 
achieve  some  sort  of  union  only  because  of 
the  intolerable  pressure  of  the  problems  cre- 
ated by  the  divisions  of  Christendom.  A 
unity  so  founded  would  certainly  fail  of  any 
wide  acceptance  or  long  continuance.  Unity 
that    is    more    than    compromise    must    be 

32 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

founded  in  obedience  to  the  Catholic  Faith 
as  received  and  transmitted  by  the  Catholic 
Episcopate.  The  unity  that  we  must  aim 
at  is  the  unity  that  Christ  prayed  for :  His 
prayer  was  not  simply,  as  it  is  usually  quoted 
by  the  advocates  of  Church  union,  that  His 
followers  might  be  one^  leaving  them  appar- 
ently to  decide  what  one  means;  but  that 
"  they  all  may  be  one;  as  thou,  Father,  art 
in  me,  and  I  in  thee,  that  they  also  may  be 
one  in  us;  that  the  world  may  believe  that 
thou  hast  sent  me."  Such  union  is  not  ac- 
complished by  agreement  and  compromise, 
it  is  the  corporate  union  of  those  who  are 
in  Christ,  and  therefore  in  one  another,  and 
who  find  the  highest  realization  of  this  union 
in  the  Communion  of  Saints. 

I  trust,  my  dear  Mr.  Marshall,  I  shall  have 
your  sympathetic  interest  and  I  beg  you  to 
believe  me 

Ever  sincerely  yours  in  our  blessed  Lord, 

J.  G.  H.  Barry. 


33 


PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 


When  we  turn  over  the  pages  of  the  New 
Testament  with  a  view  to  ascertaining  the 
meaning  the  word  Church  conveyed  to  its 
writers  and  their  readers,  we  have  no  dififi- 
culty  in  concluding  that  the  word  bears  a 
double  meaning,  and  that  what  meaning  is 
to  be  attributed  to  it  in  a  given  case  must  be 
determined  by  the  context.  In  the  first 
place,  the  word  Church  is  used  to  designate 
those  congregations  of  Christians  which, 
during  the  century  in  which  the  New  Testa- 
ment was  being  written,  were  rapidly  grow- 
ing in  number  as  the  result  of  the  Apostolic 
preaching.  These  little  groups  of  converts, 
wherever  they  may  be,  each  with  sufficient 
organization  to  enable  it  to  administer  the 
sacraments  and  to  direct  and  minister  to  the 
spiritual  life  of  its  members,  are  known  as  a 
church,  though  it  is  obvious  from  the  way  in 
which  they  are  spoken  of  that  they  have 

35 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

some  sort  of  relation  to  and  dependence  upon 
one  another.  Having  in  mind  simply  those 
passages  of  Holy  Scripture  in  which 
churches  are  spoken  of  as  communities  of 
Christians  in  this  or  that  place,  no  attentive 
reader  would  infer  from  this  that  each 
church  was  a  self-sufficient  entity,  entitled 
to  go  its  own  way  and  manc?ge  its  own  af- 
fairs, and  capable  of  perpetuating  itself  with- 
out reference  to  any  other  community. 

But  the  emphasis  in  those  passages  which 
are  geographically  descriptive  is  on  external 
position  and  not  on  essential  nature.  We 
read,  for  instance,  that  after  the  persecution 
in  which  Saul  of  Tarsus  was  the  chief  actor 
had  died  down  in  consequence  of  his  con- 
version, ''  Then  had  the  churches  rest 
throughout  all  Judea  and  Galilee  and 
Samaria,  and  were  edified ;  and  walking  in 
the  fear  of  the  Lord,  and  in  the  comfort  of 
the  Holy  Ghost,  were  multiplied."  ^  Later, 
when  St.  Paul  separated  from  St.  Barnabas 
and,  with  St.  Silas,  started  on  a  new  mis- 
sionary journey,  "  He  went  through  Syria 
and    Cilicia,    confirming    the    churches."  ^ 

1  Acts  9:31. 

2  Acts  15:41. 

'36 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

The  local  Christian  community  is  usually 
addressed  as  the  Church  in  such  and  such  a 
place:  *' The  Church  of  God  which  is  at 
Corinth."  ^  This  community  is  sometimes 
designated  from  its  meeting  place :  ''  The 
churches  of  Asia  salute  you.  Aquila  and 
Priscilla  salute  you  much  in  the  Lord,  with 
the  church  that  is  in  their  house."  *  Even 
when  St.  Paul  is  speaking  of  the  churches 
from  the  point  of  view  of  his  over-sight  of 
them,  he  still  speaks  of  them  in  the  plural. 
In  summing  up  his  labors  he  says :  **  Be- 
sides those  things  which  are  without,  that 
which  Cometh  upon  me  daily,  the  care  of  all 
the  churches."  ^ 

When,  however,  the  church  is  viewed 
with  reference,  not  to  its  extension  but  to 
its  essential  nature,  the  terms  of  its  descrip- 
tion change.  We  no  longer  think  of  Chris- 
tians assembled  in  one  place,  or  as  having 
external  relations  to  one  another,  but  we 
think  of  Christians  as  having  acquired  a  cer- 
tain character  through  the  very  act  whereby 
they  wxre  made  Christians.     What  is  made 

s  I  Cor.  1 :  2. 
*I  Cor.  i6:  19. 
BII  Cor.  11:28. 

37 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

prominent  in  the  Christian  Hfe  is  its  newness. 
The  Christian  is  not  one  who  has  accepted 
a  new  system  of  behef  or  a  new  code  of 
morahty  or  who  is  united  with  others  to 
form  a  new  society.  The  new  Christian  is 
one  who  has  passed  through  a  supernatural 
experience ;  he  has  been  *'  born  again,"  re- 
generated; he  is  the  outcome  of  a  special 
creative  act  of  God.  "  If  any  man  be  in 
Christ,  he  is  a  new  creation."  ^  He  is  this 
because  through  the  creative  action  of  God 
the  Holy  Ghost  a  new  relation  to  God  in 
Christ  has  been  achieved.  The  Incarnate 
Nature  of  our  blessed  Lord  has  been  ex- 
tended to  him  and  through  participation  in 
that  he  has  also  acquired  a  new  relation  to 
God  the  Blessed  Trinity.  "  According  to 
his  divine  power  he  hath  given  unto  us  all 
things  that  pertain  unto  life  and  godliness, 
through  the  knowledge  of  him  that  hath 
called  us  to  glory  and  virtue:  whereby  are 
given  unto  us  exceeding  great  and  precious 
promises  :  that  by  these  ye  might  be  partakers 
of  the  divine  nature."  ^  St.  Paul's  phrase 
for  expressing  the  fact  of  our  union  with  God 

6  II  Cor.  5  :  17. 

7  II  St.  Peter  i :  3-4. 

38 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

in  Christ  is  that  we  are  "  in  Christ."  As  the 
meaning  of  this  phrase  is  central  to  any  un- 
derstanding of  the  essential  nature  of  the 
spiritual  life,  it  would  be  well  to  make  one's 
self  thoroughly  familiar  with  all  the  passages 
of  St.  Paul's  writings  that  embody  this  con- 
ception. But  for  our  present  purpose  it  is 
enough  to  illustrate  the  point  with  one  or 
two  citations.  We  have  already  referred  to 
the  statement  that,  "If  any  man  be  in  Christ, 
he  is  a  new  creation."  ^  We  may  add  the 
teaching  that  all  spiritual  blessings  are  the 
result  of  being  in  Christ;  "Blessed  be  the 
God  and  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
who  hath  blessed  us  with  all  spiritual  bless- 
ings in  heavenly  places  in  Christ."  ^  Chris- 
tians are  commonly  addressed  as  those  who 
are  in  Christ.  So  St.  Paul  writing  to  the 
Colossians :  "  To  the  saints  and  faithful 
brethren  in  Christ  which  are  at  Colosse."  ^^ 
The  union  of  the  Christian  with  Christ  is  so 
central  a  fact  that  the  reality  of  his  life  is 
where  Christ  is;  this  world  is  really  of  small 
importance,    he    is   already   dead   to   that: 

8  II  Cor.  5 :  17. 
»  Eph.  1 :  3. 
"  Col.  I :  I. 

39 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

"  For  ye  are  dead,  and  your  life  is  hid  with 
Christ  in  God."  ^^  Sometimes  the  method 
of  expressing  this  spiritual  fact  is  reversed, 
as  when  St.  Paul  interprets  the  "  Mystery  " 
of  the  Incarnation  he  says :  "  To  whom 
God  would  make  known  what  is  the  riches 
of  the  glory  of  this  mystery  among  the  Gen- 
tiles; which  is  Christ  in  you  the  hope  of 
glory."  12 

This  thought  of  the  Christian  in  Christ 
and  Christ  in  the  Christian  leads  up  to  the 
conception  of  the  totality  which  results  from 
the  incorporation  of  all  Christians  in  Christ. 
The  New  Testament  word  for  describing 
this  totality  is  body  —  Christ  and  those  who 
are  in  Him  constitute  One  Body.  The  na- 
ture of  the  Body  is  stressed  because  it  needed 
and  needs  to  be  made  plain  that  the  Church 
is  not  a  society,  nor  an  organization,  the  re- 
sult of  the  agreement  in  belief  and  practice 
of  certain  individuals  who  associate  them- 
selves the  more  effectively  to  propagate  their 
beliefs  and  practices.  There  is  nothing  in 
the  New  Testament  even  to  suggest  that  the 
Church  springs  out  of  a  common  agreement 

"  Col.  3 :  3. 
12  Col.  1:27. 

40 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

or  the  desire  of  those  who  cherish  certain 
ideals  to  make  their  action  more  efficient. 
The  conception  of  the  Body  is  chosen  to  ex- 
press the  fact  of  the  inner  nature  of  the 
Christian  Church  rather  than  as  descriptive 
of  an  institution,  because  the  notion  em- 
bodied emphasizes  the  organic  character  of 
the  fact  to  be  described.  An  institution,  a 
society,  grows  through  association;  and  a 
body  grows  through  the  extending  life  of  its 
original  germ;  it  is  built  up  by  virtue  of  the 
central  life  communicating  itself,  and  what 
is  added  to  the  body  is  truly  made  living  by 
contact  with  the  central  life. 

When,  then,  we  try  to  understand  the  na- 
ture of  the  Church  as  a  totality  in  contrast 
with  the  notion  of  churches  as  scattered 
communities  of  Christians,  we  are  met  by 
this  notion  of  the  Church  as  an  organic 
whole:  the  assumption  of  humanity  to  the 
divine  Person  of  the  Son  of  God  in  the  In- 
carnation. Incarnate  God  is  the  manifesta- 
tion of  God  on  earth,  the  kingdom  of  God, 
the  Church.  The  kingdom  of  God,  the 
Church,  grows  with  the  expansion  of  the 
Incarnate  Body  through  the  regeneration  of 
human  souls,  through  the  extension  to  them 

41 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

of  the  Incarnate  Life  by  participation  in 
which  they  Hkewise  become  partakers  of  the 
divine  nature.  The  actual  upbuilding  of  the 
Church,  the  edification  of  the  Body  of 
Christ,  is  an  organic  growth,  the  development 
of  a  living  body.  This  is  the  point  of  view 
from  which  the  Church  as  a  whole,  in  con- 
trast with  the  scattered  congregations  which 
are  its  external  manifestation,  is  presented 
in  the  New  Testament. 

Christ  the  Head,  we  the  members  — 
Christ  first,  we  made  one  with  Him  by  the 
impartation  to  us  of  His  life  —  that  is  the 
New  Testament  conception  of  the  Body. 
Such  a  Body  is,  of  necessity  one;  it  is  im- 
possible to  conceive  it  otherwise.  This  unity 
is  the  essential  unity  of  a  shared  life,  not  the 
federated  unity  of  a  voluntary  agreement. 
"  He  is  the  head  of  the  body,  the  church."  ^^ 
God  "  hath  put  all  things  under  his  feet,  and 
gave  him  to  be  the  head  over  all  things  to  the 
church,  which  is  his  body,  the  fullness  of 
him  that  filleth  all  in  all."  ^^  In  this  Body  of 
which  all  the  baptized  are  members,  the  pur- 
poses of  the  central  life  are  fulfilled  through 

13  Col.  I :  i8. 
1*  Eph.  1 :  23. 

42 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

a  diversity  of  operation  in  the  members. 
There  is  distinction  of  function  within  the 
unity  of  this  spiritual  body  which  is  the 
Church  as  there  is  in  the  natural  body  of 
man.  There  is  no  need  to  follow  out  in  de- 
tail the  wonderful  exposition  of  this  theme 
in  the  First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians.  St. 
Paul's  summing  up  will  be  sufficient  for  our 
purpose :  "  For  as  the  body  is  one,  and  hath 
many  members,  and  all  the  members  of  that 
one  body,  being  many,  are  one  body :  so  also 
is  Christ.  .  .  .  Now  ye  are  the  body  of 
Christ,  and  severally  members  thereof."  ^^ 
The  intimacy  of  this  personal  union  with 
Christ  is  further  emphasized  in  the  Epistle 
to  the  Ephesians :  *'  For  we  are  members 
of  his  body,  of  his  flesh,  and  of  his  bones."  ^^ 
It  is  to  the  growth  of  the  body  that  St. 
Paul  looks  for  that  final  conquest  of  the 
world  by  the  kingdom  of  God,  when  at 
length  all  shall  have  been  gathered  into  the 
unity  of  Christ  and  all  differences  shall  in 
consequence  pass  away.  All  men  who  are 
saved  will  ultimately  become  members  of  the 
Body,  and  whatever  was  ideal  when  he  wrote 

15  I  Cor.  12 :  12  and  27. 
"Eph.  5:30. 

43 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

•will  become  actual.  It  is  to  this  end  that 
gifts  have  been  bestowed  upon  the  body  by 
the  operation  of  the  Holy  Spirit  within  it. 
They  have  been  given  "  For  the  perfecting 
of  the  saints,  for  the  work  of  the  ministry, 
for  the  building  of  the  body  of  Christ :  till  we 
all  come  into  the  unity  of  the  faith,  and  of 
the  knowledge  of  the  Son  of  God,  unto  a 
complete  man,  unto  the  measure  of  the 
stature  of  the  completion  of  Christ."  ^^  St. 
Paul  has  already  expressed  this  conception 
a  little  earlier  in  the  epistle  where  he  de- 
scribes the  Church  as  the  ''  Completeness  of 
him  who  all  in  all  is  being  completed."  ^^ 

It  is  through  the  progress  of  this  unity 
that  all  diversities  will  ultimately  be 
banished.  Not  that  diversity  of  function 
within  the  body  which  is  the  manifold  mani- 
festation and  application  of  the  One  Life, 
but  that  diversity  between  men  which  has 
within  it  the  seeds  of  hostility.  In  the 
"  Completeness  "  when  all  things  shall  have 
become  obedient  to  Christ,  and  presently,  so 
far  as  obedience  to  Christ  is  found,  the 
diversity  which  is  hostility  is  done  away. 

i^Eph.  4:  12  and  13. 
^'  Eph.  1 :  23. 

44 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

"  In  the  fellowship  of  the  Church,  or,  as  St. 
Paul  would  prefer  to  put  it,  in  Jesus  Christ, 
the  deepest  of  all  divisions  based  on  religious 
faith  becomes  negligible;  there  is  neither 
Jew  nor  Gentile ;  the  deepest  of  all  divisions 
based  on  culture  and  civilization  becomes 
negligible;  there  is  neither  Greek  nor  Scy- 
thian: the  deepest  of  all  social  divisions  be- 
come negligible;  there  is  neither  bond  nor 
free,  servant  nor  master;  even  that  division 
of  sex  on  which  the  whole  social  fabric  rests 
becomes  negligible,  there  is  neither  male  nor 
female;  but  what?  One  man  in  Christ 
Jesus  —  the  whole  human  race  governed  by 
one  purpose,  and  that  the  purpose  of 
Christ."  ^^  The  same  truth  is  reiterated  in 
the  Epistle  to  the  Colossians :  "  And  have 
put  on  the  new  man,  which  is  renewed  in 
knowledge  after  the  image  of  him  that  cre- 
ated him :  where  there  is  neither  Greek  nor 
Jew,  circumcision  nor  uncircumcision,  Bar- 
barian, Scythian,  bond  nor  free :  but  Christ 
is  all,  and  in  all."  ^^ 

This  Apostolic  conception  of  the  Incarnate 

i»  Temple,  Issues  of  Faith,  pp.  i6  and  17:    Gal. 
3:28. 
*®  Col.  3 :  10  and  1 1. 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Life  as  progressively  subjecting  all  things  to, 
and  incorporating  all  things  in  itself,  is  the 
conception  of  a  rebellious  world  brought 
back  to  submission  to  the  Divine  will.  It  is 
the  conception  of  hostile  diversity  converted 
to  diversified  unity.  It  is  not  man  alone  but 
the  whole  creation  which  will  experience  this 
unifying  process.  Man  who  is  immediately 
redeemed  by  Christ  stands  first ;  but  in  conse- 
quence of  his  return  to  God  in  Christ  the 
creation  will  follow :  "  For  the  earnest  ex- 
pectation of  the  creation  waiteth  for  the 
manifestation  of  the  sons  of  God.  For  the 
creation  was  subjected  to  vanity,  not  will- 
ingly, but  by  reason  of  him  who  subjected 
it,  in  hope  that  the  creation  itself  also  shall 
be  delivered  from  the  bondage  of  corrup- 
tion into  the  liberty  of  the  glory  of  the  chil- 
dren of  God."  ^^  It  is  obvious  that  the  re- 
lation of  the  individual  man  to  this  process 
which  includes  the  universe  in  its  scope,  and 
also  to  that  special  part  of  the  process  which 
is  the  Church  Militant  here  on  earth,  is  a 
strictly  subordinate  and  dependent  relation. 
The  one  thing  that  would  seem  to  be  abso- 
lutely excluded  in  any  the  most  elementary 
21  Rom.  8 :  1^21. 

46 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

view  of  the  action  of  the  Church  would  be 
individuaHsm.  There  is  room  in  the  Body 
of  Christ  for  endless  diversity  of  function, 
for  the  development  to  the  very  uttermost 
of  our  special  endowments.  One  of  the 
wonders  of  the  development  of  Christian 
character  under  the  discipline  of  the  Church 
has  been  its  striking  diversity  of  detail  in 
association  with  a  perfect  unity  of  purpose. 
But  there  can  be  no  place  in  the  Church  for 
the  morbid  egoism  which  is  bent  before  all 
things  on  the  assertion  of  self  and  the  real- 
ization of  certain  assumed  rights.  There 
can  be  in  the  Body  no  independent  action; 
all  action  has  relation  to  the  actions  of  others 
and  to  the  purposes  of  the  Body  as  a  whole. 
The  religious  individualist  who  will  have 
nothing  between  his  soul  and  God  is  attempt- 
ing the  impossible  task  of  being  a  universe 
by  himself.  He  in  fact  isolates  himself 
much  more  from  his  brother  man  than  the 
much-despised  hermit  who  still  considers 
himself  a  member  of  the  Church  of  God  with 
all  the  obligations  of  such  membership.  He 
at  least  is  attempting  to  realize  the  Com- 
munion of  Saints  which  the  individualist, 
in  practice,  denies.     "  In  true  religion  un- 

47 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

limited  individualism  is  an  impossibility. 
The  individual  can  only  attain  to  his  highest 
in  the  life  of  the  community  alike  here  and 
hereafter.'*  " 


II 


This  biblical  teaching  of  the  union  of  all 
Christians  in  Christ  and,  through  their  union 
in  Christ,  with  one  another,  was  in  due  time 
formulated  and  inserted  in  the  Creed  as  the 
article,  "  I  believe  in  the  Communion  of 
Saints."  It  is  almost  the  latest  article  of 
the  Faith  to  gain  entrance  to  the  Creed. 
The  clause  appears  in  a  creed  which  was  cir- 
culated under  the  name  of  St.  Jerome,  which 
ends  with  the  words :  "  I  believe  in  the  re- 
mission of  sins,  in  the  Holy  Catholic  Church, 
the  Communion  of  Saints,  the  Resurrection 
of  the  Flesh  unto  Life  everlasting."  Early 
in  the  fifth  century,  before  the  death  of 
Jerome,  the  clause  is  found  in  a  commentary 
on  the  Creed  by  Niceta,  Bishop  of  Remesi- 
ana.  From  the  East  it  traveled  gradually 
westward  until  it  had  obtained  universal 
recognition  in  the  Church. ^^ 

22  Charles,  p.  80. 

23  Swcete,  The  Holy  Catholic  Church,  pp.  157  ff. 

48 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

It  was  during  the  centuries  which  preceded 
and  immediately  followed  the  adoption  of 
the  Communion  of  Saints  as  an  article  of  the 
Faith  that  the  Church  was  chiefly  engaged 
in  that  process  of  theological  formulation 
which  resulted  in  the  dogmatic  decrees  of 
the  Ecumenical  Councils.  I  think  we  best 
understand  this  process  when  we  see  in  it 
the  mind  of  the  Church  engaged  in  thinking 
out  the  meaning  of  the  revelation  committed 
to  it.  The  nature  of  that  revelation,  as  con- 
veying to  man  so  much  as  he  can  know  of 
the  meaning  of  God  and  of  God's  will  for 
him,  of  the  mode  of  God's  appeal  to  him  in 
the  Incarnation  and  all  that  follows  from  it, 
is  so  stupendous  as  to  make  it  impossible  that 
it  should  be  at  once  grasped  in  its  entirety. 
Our  Lord  had  warned  His  followers  against 
any  assumption  that  all  that  was  needed  was 
to  know  "  the  simple  words  of  Christ.'*  He 
made  plain  to  them  the  need  of  guidance  to 
the  understanding  of  His  teaching  and  to  the 
fact  that  the  Holy  Spirit,  Whom  He  was  to 
send  as  His  Vicar  to  abide  with  men  for- 
ever, would  take  up  the  work  of  unfolding 
the  meaning  of  His  revelation  and  lead  them 
into  all  the  truth :     "  When  he,  the  Spirit  of 

49 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

truth,  is  come,  he  will  guide  you  into  all  the 
truth:  for  he  shall  npt  speak  of  himself;  but 
whatsoever  he  shall  hear,  that  shall  he  speak ; 
and  he  will  show  you  things  to  come."  ^* 
The  result  of  this  guiding  action  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  is  seen  in  the  slowly  growing  appre- 
hension of  the  meaning  and  implications  of 
our  Lord's  teaching  by  the  mind  of  the 
Church.  We  can  see  this  process  in  the 
struggle  between  that  conception  of  the 
Church  which  would  have  made  it  a  sect  of 
modified  Judeaism,  Judeaism  plus  a  Messiah 
Judeaistically  conceived,  and  the  conception 
championed  by  St.  Paul  of  a  Church  embrac- 
ing humanity  because  of  the  universal  nature 
of  the  humanity  assumed  by  our  Lord.  You 
can  see  it  in  the  early  heresies  concerning  the 
Person  of  our  Lord  which  were  essentially 
failures  to  grasp  the  notion  of  God  incarnate, 
failure  to  think  deep  enough  into  the  facts 
of  the  Gospel.  We  feel  that  even  to-day 
there  is  much  failure  to  think  out  the  mean- 
ing of  the  Christian  revelation.  The  Church 
has  never  succeeded  in  at  all  adequately  pre- 
senting the  kingdom  of  God  as  a  transform- 
ing social  force :  the  possible  relations  of  the 
2*  St.  John  i6: 13. 

50 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Church  to  the  social  order  are  still  unreal- 
ized, with  the  result  of  a  growing  antagon- 
ism between  the  aims  of  the  Church  and  the 
aims  of  secular  society.  We  all  know  the 
difficulty  that  we  have  in  grasping  the  teach- 
ings of  the  Christian  religion  in  other  than 
a  fragmentary  way,  in  attaining  anything 
that  we  can  consider  as  at  all  a  well  rounded 
spiritual  development.  It  is,  therefore,  easy 
to  grasp  the  fact  that  the  apprehension  of 
the  Gospel  by  the  first  generations  of  the 
Church  must  have  been  a  growing  apprehen- 
sion and  the  formulation  of  its  conclusions 
gradual.  What  the  first  centuries  of  the 
Christian  era  presented  to  us  is  the  spectacle 
of  the  Church  thinking  —  thinking  its  way 
into  the  meaning  of  its  spiritual  trust,  think- 
ing what  each  item  of  it  meant  in  itself  and 
in  relation  to  all  the  other  items,  and  how 
best  these  truths  committed  to  it  could  be 
brought  to  bear  on  human  lives  so  as  to 
stimulate  them  to  response  to  the  demands 
of  God  upon  them. 

So  rich  are  the  meanings  which  are  packed 
into  this  clause  of  the  Creed  —  I  believe  in 
the  Communion  of  Saints  —  that  it  is  small 
wonder  that  the  Church  was  slow  in  actually 

51 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

appropriating  them.     To  be  knit  into  one 

body  with  Christ  and  all  our  brethren,  to  be 
partakers  of  a  common  life  and  co-workers 
in  a  common  action,  and  that  action  the 
bringing  of  all  men  to  the  obedience  of  God 
in  Christ,  is  so  tremendous  a  thing  and  so 
complex,  that  the  reactions  on  life  must  be 
manifold.  How  could  this  communion,  this 
fellowship,  even  begin  to  be  realized  ?  How 
am  I  to  act  upon  it?  We  get  a  very  early 
expression  of  it  in  the  opening  of  the  Acts 
of  the  Apostles :  "  And  they  continued 
steadfastly  in  the  apostles'  doctrine  and  fel- 
lowship, and  in  the  breaking  of  the  bread  and 
in  the  prayers  —  continuing  daily  with  one 
accord  in  the  Temple,  and  breaking  bread  at 
home,  did  eat  their  meat  with  gladness."  ^° 
Here  are  various  modes  of  exercising  the 
common  life.  I  think  we  shall  not  be  wrong 
in  assuming  that  they  would  have  found 
their  earliest  experience  of  their  union  with 
our  Lord  and  with  one  another  in  their  daily 
Eucharist.  This  is  the  sacrament  of  union 
—  of  union  with  our  Lord  and  of  one  another 
in  Him.  The  congregations  of  the  early 
25  Acts  2 :  42  and  46. 


■52 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Church  as  they  met  for  the  celebration  of 
the  Supper  must  have  felt  this  acutely  be- 
cause by  the  very  terms  of  their  Christian 
living  they  were  a  people  apart.  This 
separateness  would  increase  as  time  went  on 
and  the  exercise  of  their  religion  raised  up 
against  them  the  hostility  of  the  state 
whether  Jewish  or  Roman.  Modern  Chris- 
tians have  so  universally  abandoned  the 
strictness  of  the  Christian  life  and  so  lapsed 
to  a  life  of  compromise  and  conformity  to 
the  world,  that  they  have  lost  almost  entirely 
the  sense  of  communion  with  one  another, 
the  sense  of  a  common  membership  in 
Christ;  and  therefore  they  have  lost  one  of 
the  readiest  keys  to  open  the  mystery  of  wor- 
ship. For  Christian  worship  is  essentially 
the  act  of  a  community.  The  sacrament  that 
we  partake  together  is  a  communion,  the 
sharing  in  common  of  the  thing  partaken,  the 
humanity  of  Christ.  Through  our  partak- 
ing of  Him  we  are  brought  together.  *'  For 
we  being  many  are  one  loaf,  and  one  body : 
for  we  are  all  partakers  of  that  one  loaf."  ^^ 
36  1  Cor.  10 :  17. 


53 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 


III 


Here  we  are  in  the  very  heart  of  the  mean- 
ing of  our  clause  because  here  heaven  and 
earth  meet.  The  worship  of  the  Eucharist 
is  the  worship  of  the  whole  Church ;  it  is  not 
merely  an  affair  of  the  Church  Militant. 
The  worship  that  we  offer  is  identical  with 
the  worship  of  heaven.  In  this  sacrifice  of 
the  earthly  and  the  heavenly  altars  the  Priest 
and  the  Victim  are  the  same.  We  lift  up  our 
hearts  above  this  world  unto  the  Lord  and 
join  in  the  united  worship  of  earth  and 
heaven  where  not  only  redeemed  humanity, 
but  angels  and  archangels  and  all  the  com- 
pany of  heaven  are  partakers.  Intelligent 
participation  in  the  Eucharistic  worship  of 
the  Church  takes  us  a  long  way  toward  the 
comprehension  of  the  Communion  of  Saints. 
And  because  the  Eucharistic  worship  of  the 
Church  has  been  so  thrown  into  the  back- 
ground in  the  Churches  of  the  Anglican 
Rite,  one  road  to  the  realization  of  the  mean- 
ing of  the  Communion  of  Saints  has  been 
blocked.  The  average  parish  of  to-day 
offers  to  its  members  an  early  communion 

54 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

once  a  week.  It  is  inevitable  that  those  who 
attend  should  come  with  the  thought  prom- 
inent, although  unanalyzed,  of  seeking  a  gift 
for  themselves  in  an  act  of  individual  com- 
munion. It  is  difficult  to  see  how  it  can  be 
otherwise  when  in  a  parish  of,  say,  one  hun- 
dred and  fifty  communicants,  some  dozen  or 
fifteen  will  represent  the  average  attendance 
at  an  early  Mass.  In  the  few  parishes  where 
the  late  service  is  indeed  the  Lord's  service 
it  has  been  found  desirable  to  discourage  late 
communions  because  of  the  lack  of  observ- 
ance of  the  Church  rule  of  fasting.  But 
certainly  we  must  recognize  that  the  func- 
tion of  the  Eucharist  to  interpret  and  actual- 
ize the  Communion  of  Saints  is  obscured 
under  present  conditions  and  will  so  remain 
until  something  like  corporate  communions 
become  a  part  of  our  parochial  life.  We 
have  such  at  Christmas  and  Easter  —  at 
least  in  the  present  habit  of  parochial  com- 
munions at  Christmas  and  Easter  we  have 
the  opportunity  of  emphasizing  the  corpor- 
ate nature  of  the  act.  It  would  probably  not 
be  difficult  to  increase  the  number  of  such 
parochial  communions;  indeed,  this  is  often 
done  by  adding  to  Christmas  and  Easter, 

55 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Whit-Sunday  and  All  Saints,  and,  perhaps,  a 
dedication  or  patronal  festival.  A  com- 
munity which  has  caught  the  meaning  of 
communion  as  communion  not  only  with  our 
Lord  but  with  one  another,  will  have  no  diffi- 
culty in  carrying  the  same  intention  into  acts 
of  communion  which  are  only  representative 
of  the  whole  body  —  as  indeed  all  com- 
munions must  be  in  degree. 

I  do  not  at  all  mean  in  what  I  have  said 
above  to  imply  that  I  think  late  Masses  with- 
out communions  from  the  congregation  are 
unjustifiable  or  imperfect.  It  is  no  doubt 
of  somewhat  late  development  in  the  history 
of  the  Church,  but  I  cannot  assent  to  that 
interpretation  of  things  ecclesiastical  which 
makes  late  a  synonym  of  wrong  or  impermis- 
sible. The  Church  did  not  think  about  the 
revelation  committed  to  it  for  a  certain  num- 
ber of  years  and  then  say,  "  I  have  thought 
it  all  out  and  henceforth  have  need  to  think 
no  more."  There  are  obvious  objections  to 
a  Church  which  does  not  think,  and  which 
does  not  produce  things  new  as  well  as  old 
out  of  its  treasure.  And  in  fact  the  Church 
was  not  long  in  seeing  that  in  the  complex 
act  of  the  Eucharist,  communion  and  wor- 

56 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

ship  are  separable  elements  in  the  spiritual 
experience  of  the  individual  member  of  the 
Body;  and  that  the  fact  that  a  Christian  is 
not  prepared  on  a  certain  occasion  to  make 
his  communion  does  not  exclude  him  from 
the  corporate  worship  of  the  congregation. 
The  offering  of  the  Eucharistic  sacrifice  is 
the  act  of  the  whole  Body  of  Christ  in  a 
given  place,  and  within  that  Eucharistic  act 
there  is  the  distribution  of  the  sacred  Body 
and  Blood  to  such  as  are  prepared  to  receive 
them.  But  if  an  individual  is  not  so  pre- 
pared he  is  surely  not  cut  off  from  the  wor- 
shiping Body  —  not  to  be  prepared  to  re- 
ceive the  communion  at  any  given  time  is  not 
the  equivalent  of  excommunication.  The 
central  act  of  worship  of  the  Christian  con- 
gregation is  offered  without  reference  to  the 
preparation  of  this  or  that  individual  person 
to  make  his  communion.  What  the  Mass 
without  communions  implies  is  that  either 
the  members  of  the  congregation  have  made 
their  communions  at  some  other  Mass  but 
now  wish  to  join  in  the  offering  of  the  sacri- 
fice as  an  act  of  worship  —  the  great  cor- 
porate act  of  the  parish  for  the  day  —  or 
that  they  are  at  that  time  for  some  reason 

57 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

unprepared  to  make  their  communion. 
There  is,  of  course,  the  danger,  I  think  at 
present  rather  remote,  of  the  habitual  sub- 
stitution of  participation  in  sacrificial  wor- 
ship for  the  reception  of  the  sacrifice.  The 
perception  of  a  danger  means  that  we  are  on 
our  guard  against  it.  At  present  I  think  it 
will  be  found  that  communions  are  more  fre- 
quent in  parishes  where  the  late  Mass  with- 
out communions  is  celebrated  than  in  others. 


IV 


The  realization  of  our  union  with  our 
Lord  and  with  one  another  in  the  Holy  Eu- 
charist is  only  one  form  of  this  spiritual 
experience  of  the  Communion  of  Saints: 
there  are  many  others,  for  from  the  very 
nature  of  this  communion  it  must  lie  back 
of  and  interpenetrate  all  Christian  action. 
"  None  of  us  liveth  to  himself."  "  We  are 
members  one  of  another."  By  participation 
in  the  sacrifice  of  our  Lord  we  have  reached 
the  highest  form  of  prayer  but  we  have  not 
exhausted  the  modes  of  prayer.  Wherever 
there  is  prayer  that  has  reference  to  others, 

58 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

whether  those  others  are  its  objects  or 
whether  they  are  those  who  cooperate  in  our 
asking,  the  Communion  of  Saints  is  ener- 
getic. Prayer,  indeed,  is  one  of  the  most 
fruitful  ways  of  fulfiUing  the  obHgations  to 
others  which  grow  out  of  our  union  with 
them.  Prayer  annihilates  time  and  space ;  it 
enables  us  to  throw  the  help  of  our  interces- 
sion to  those  whom  we  have  never  seen  and 
from  whom  half  the  world  separates  us. 
The  ceaseless  intercession  that  goes  up  about 
the  altars  of  the  earthly  Church  and  from  the 
hidden  places  of  solitary  intercessors  is  the 
means  —  one  of  the  greatest  —  of  the  re- 
lease of  the  spiritual  energy  of  the  Incarna- 
tion. It  is  not  only  the  worshipers  at  the 
Sunday  service,  perhaps  not  chiefly  those, 
whom  we  think  of  when  we  think  of  the 
energy  of  prayer  which  is  being  constantly 
brought  to  bear  upon  the  world.  We  think 
of  the  religious  houses  where  is  the  constant 
presentation  of  the  Divine  Office;  we  think 
of  the  multitudes  kneeling  daily  before  the 
Tabernacles  of  Christendom;  we  think  of  the 
silent  forms  we  see  in  churches,  of  those 
who  have  paused  in  their  work  to  seek  some 
quiet  place  where  they  may  lay  their  heart 

59 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

before  God,  of  those  whose  lips  are  moving 
and  whose  hearts  are  burning  as  in  the  midst 
of  the  distracting  business  of  this  world  they 
lift  up  their  spirits  to  God  on  behalf  of  their 
brethren.  The  tides  of  prayer  flow  con- 
stantly from  earth  to  heaven;  the  answers 
to  prayer  flow  back  to  earth.  How  much  we 
know  of  that;  and  how  little  of  the  whole 
fact  is  the  much  we  know!  We  know  of 
missions  carried  on,  of  institutions  sup- 
ported, of  souls  and  bodies  healed,  of  the 
constant  performance  of  spiritual  miracles, 
in  answer  to  prayer.  And  yet  we  know  only 
in  part,  fragmentarily.  We  know  just 
enough  to  encourage  us  and  to  guide  us  on 
our  way,  to  sustain  us  in  the  weariness  of 
our  pilgrimage;  but  w^hat  we  see  sends  us 
on  our  way  light-hearted,  filled  with  the  con- 
fidence and  joy  of  those  who  have  found  the 
meaning  of  union  with  God. 


This  silent  fellowship  in  prayer  must  be 
supplemented  whenever  God  sends  the  op- 
portunity —  and  when  does  He  not  send  it  ? 

60 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

—  by  the  fellowship  of  service.  We  arc 
members  one  of  another,  the  bond  of  broth- 
erhood in  Christ  unites  us.  Here,  perhaps, 
more  than  anywhere  else  the  word  failure 
is  written  large  across  the  history  of  the 
Christian  Church.  No  doubt  if  we  choose 
to  fasten  our  attention  upon  what  has  been 
done  it  will  seem  large  in  amount ;  especially 
will  it  seem  so  if  we  choose  to  put  it  in  con- 
trast with  the  failure  of  others.  Those  who 
write  books  on  the  results  of  Christian  ac- 
tivity or  on  the  fruits  of  missions,  and  who 
bring  into  contrast  the  works  of  the  heathen 
and  of  the  Christian,  have  a  wonderful  story 
to  tell.  But  it  is  not  the  story  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church  as  a  social  force ;  it  only  gives  a 
catalogue  of  selected  phenomena.  The  his- 
tory of  the  attempt  of  the  Christian  Church 
to  transform  human  society  into  the  king- 
dom of  God,  to  convert  and  to  spiritualize 
the  world,  is  the  history  hitherto  of  tremen- 
dous failure  —  failure  not  because  the  in- 
struments and  energies  at  the  disposal  of  the 
Church  were  incompetent  to  the  task,  but 
failure  because  the  Church  as  a  whole  has 
not  really  attempted  the  task  but  abandoned 
the  ideals  of  the  Gospel  for  the  methods  of 

6i 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

worldliness.  The  "  Called  out  "  soon  went 
back  to  the  soft  clothing  of  the  Kings* 
Houses  they  were  supposed  to  have  aban- 
doned for  the  leather  and  locusts  of  the 
desert.  So  we  have  the  spectacle,  not  of  a 
Church  vibrant  with  spiritual  energy  and  a 
converted  world,  but  of  an  unconverted 
world  now  at  length  turning  contemptuously 
upon  a  Church  which  has  sacrificed  its  voca- 
tion to  men-pleasing!  One  can  conceive  no 
greater  example  of  spiritual  incompetence 
than  the  life  of  the  ordinary  member  of  the 
Church  considered  as  an  attempt  to  translate 
the  Gospel  life  into  terms  of  contemporary 
living. 

But  no  time  has  called  louder  for  that 
understanding  of  the  Communion  of  Saints 
which  is  the  realization  of  the  Church  as  a 
brotherhood  than  the  time  in  which  we  live. 
We  thought  we  had  got  rid  of  classes  in  get- 
ting rid  of  a  recognized  aristocracy.  Now 
it  turns  out  that  within  the  democratic  state 
it  is  possible  to  have  social  classes  as  sharply 
accented  as  any  in  the  societies  of  the  past. 
If  to-day  class  distinctions  are  rather  vague, 
at  least  class  hatred  is  distinct  enough.  The 
Church  which  in  the  nature  of  things  is  so- 

62 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

cially  conservative  more  and  more  incurs  the 
hatred  of  the  radical  and,  as  they  think  them- 
selves, the  progressive.  The  Christian  com- 
munity tends  more  and  more  to  be  limited, 
not  by  its  own  withdrawal  from  the  world, 
or  by  its  enforcement  of  such  spiritual  dis- 
cipline as  would  exclude  merely  nominal  ad- 
herents, but  by  the  withdrawal  of  multitudes 
who  see  in  the  Church  an  instrument  of  a 
hostile  class  or  an  institution  which  is  utterly 
indifferent  to  what  they  feel  to  be  their  vital 
interest.  If  the  Church  is  to  make  head- 
way against  growing  opposition  and  revolt, 
if  it  is  to  survive  at  all  in  the  state  of  the 
future,  it  must  set  itself  to  realize  the  Com- 
munion of  Saints.  It  cannot  do  this  by  the 
patronage  of  social  service.  It  must  vindi- 
cate its  right  to  be  called  a  brotherhood,  not 
by  fussy  charity  or  incompetent  attempts  to 
direct  social  movements,  but  by  the  demon- 
stration that  the  existing  membership  of  the 
Church  is  in  reality  a  brotherhood  —  a 
brotherhood  in  Christ.  When  one  can  see 
that  the  membership  of  our  parishes  is 
plainly  being  unified  on  the  ground  of  mem- 
bership in  Christ,  when  silly  social  distinc- 
tions break  down  because  we  have  found  an 

63 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

underlying  bond  of  union,  when  love  of  the 
brethren  rules  all  social  relations,  then  it  may 
be  possible  for  us  to  go  to  the  world  with  a 
demonstration  of  the  reality  of  our  religion 
that  it  will  be  unable  to  resist,  as  when  in 
the  first  centuries  of  the  life  of  the  Church 
the  impression  produced  upon  the  heathen 
was,  "  See  how  these  Christians  love  one  an- 
other !  "  Until  those  days  return,  until  we 
can  present  to  the  world  the  aspect  of  a  com- 
munion of  saints,  it  is  not  likely  that  our 
propaganda  will  be  very  effective. 


VI 

We  have  hitherto  thought  of  the  Com- 
munion of  Saints  as  the  Church  Militant 
here  on  Earth.  But  the  frontiers  of  the 
Church  Militant  are  not  the  frontiers  of  the 
Body  of  Christ,  and  therefore  not  of  the 
Communion  of  Saints.  The  Church  Mili- 
tant is  that  part  of  the  whole  Church  with 
which  we  are  particularly  concerned,  it  is 
said;  and  that  no  doubt  is  true,  if  we  remem- 
ber that  it  is  a  part  that  we  are  concerned 
with,  and  that  a  part  cannot  adequately  be 

64 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

understood  or  dealt  with  except  we  have 
constantly  in  view  its  relation  to  the  whole. 
The  colony  of  a  state  has  no  doubt  its  own 
local  interests  which  are  important  and  are 
necessarily  in  the  foreground  of  its  legisla- 
tion, but  it  cannot  therefore  neglect  the  fact 
that  it  is  a  colony  and  that  its  relations  to 
the  mother  country  are  vital.  Each  mem- 
ber of  the  Body  has  its  own  individual  office, 
but  it  could  not  fulfill  that  office  except  it 
were  connected  with  the  central  life.  The 
vine  branch  puts  forth  its  blossoms  and  bears 
its  fruit,  but  only  on  condition  that  it  abides 
in  the  vine.  So  the  Church  Militant  exists 
at  all  only  through  its  inherence  in  the  mys- 
tical Body  as  a  whole.  If,  conceivably,  it 
were  to  forget  its  relation  to  the  whole  Body 
it  must  die. 

The  Communion  of  Saints  comprises  not 
only  the  Church  Militant  but  the  Church  Ex- 
pectant and  the  Church  Triumphant.  In 
comparison  with  the  total  life  and  activity 
of  the  Body  of  Christ  the  Church  Militant 
appears  as  an  outlying  province  of  the  king- 
dom of  God.  We  are  apt  to  think  and  speak 
as  though  the  unseen  provinces  of  the  Church 
were  rather  unimportant  outlying  depend- 

6s 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

encies  of  the  Church  on  earth.  This  thought 
needs  to  be  reversed.  The  Church  on  earth 
at  any  time  is  numerically  insignificant  com- 
pared with  the  totality  of  the  Body  of  Christ, 
and  its  failure  will  not  be  the  failure  of  the 
whole  Body,  but  the  failure  of  certain  mem- 
bers to  realize  their  vocation.  Our  Lord 
recognized  failure  as  well  as  success  as  enter- 
ing into  the  experience  of  His  Church  on 
earth.  There  would  be  dead  branches  to 
be  removed  and  tares  to  be  gathered  up  and 
burned,  which  surely  implies  not  simply  the 
individual  failure  with  which  we  are  wont 
to  identify  it,  but  that  failure  of  a  whole 
local  church  which  has  occurred  over  and 
over  again  in  the  history  of  Christendom. 
But  the  Body  of  Christ  which  has  sought 
to  express  itself  in  this  or  that  place  and 
has  failed  because  of  the  lack  of  human  co- 
operation renews  the  attempt  elsewhere. 

The  foundation  expression  of  the  Com- 
munion of  Saints,  that  we  are  members  one 
of  another  and  all  of  Christ,  holds  neces- 
sarily for  all  the  members  of  the  Body. 
There  is  nothing  that  one  can  see  in  death 
that  can  destroy  spiritual  relationship  or 
spiritual  activity.     The  members  of  the  Body 

66 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

do  not  rejoice  and  suffer  together  because 
they  are  in  a  certain  place  but  because  they 
are  members  one  of  another.  The  modes 
of  the  activity  of  the  members  one  toward 
another  no  doubt  change  through  the  change 
in  their  outer  and  material  relationship;  but 
change  does  not  mean  cessation,  nor  does 
the  cessation  of  certain  activities  mean  the 
abolition  of  the  possibility  of  all  activity. 
There  is  no  way  of  conceiving  the  various 
states  of  the  Church  —  Militant,  Expectant, 
Triumphant  —  as  remaining  in  relation  one 
to  another  except  as  we  conceive  their  activ- 
ity as  being  exercised  through  reciprocal  of- 
fices. The  Communion  of  Saints  is  no 
longer  a  communion  of  the  whole  Body  of 
Christ  except  as  that  communion  is  made 
effective  through  the  influence  of  life  upon 
life.  It  will  not  do  to  say  that  all  members 
of  the  Church  are  influenced  and  acted  upon 
by  the  one  Head  of  the  Body,  and  in  their 
turn  respond  directly  to  His  influence  and 
action.  That  is  not  the  Biblical  doctrine 
of  the  Communion  of  Saints :  that  doctrine 
is  that  there  is  a  relation  of  member  with 
member  because  of  their  participation  in  the 
Incarnate   life.     A    graphic    figure    of    the 

67 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Communion  of  Saints  would  represent  it, 
not  as  an  infinite  number  of  points  each 
connected  by  a  line  with  a  common  center; 
it  would  rather  be  the  figure  of  a  net  in 
which  all  points  are  connected  one  with 
another  as  well  as  with  the  common  center. 
The  movements  of  the  planets  in  a  solar  sys- 
tem are  regulated  not  only  by  the  pull  of 
the  central  sun,  but  by  the  total  system  of 
forces  resulting  from  the  several  pulls  of 
the  planets  on  one  another. 


VII 


If  we  are  to  think  in  terms  of  Biblical 
teaching  and  Catholic  theology  we  are  bound 
to  think  of  the  Communion  of  Saints  as  the 
totality  of  those  in  Christ  in  the  constant 
exercise  of  spiritual  activities  toward  one 
another.  All  these  we  must  conceive  as  be- 
ing profoundly  interested  in  one  another. 
And  from  the  nature  of  the  Body  as  a  sys- 
tem of  intcr-acting  members  we  should  cer- 
tainly infer  some  sort  of  action  of  mem- 
ber upon  member.  But  we  are  not  left  to 
inference.     This    world    and    *'  the    other 

68 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

world,"  as  we  call  it,  are  nowhere  in  Scrip- 
ture represented  to  us  as  so  separated  one 
from  another  that  intercommunication  is  im- 
possible. Naturally,  when  it  is  a  question 
of  the  Communion  of  Saints  the  Old  Testa- 
ment is  not  available  —  we  must  wait  for 
evidence  of  that  sort  until  the  ascending 
Christ  leads  His  troop  of  captives  through 
the  lifted  gates  of  heaven.  But  as  to  the 
fact  of  constant  and  ready  communication 
of  a  sort  between  the  two  worlds,  we  have 
but  to  think  of  the  angelic  ministries,  the 
accounts  of  which  are  so  outstanding  fea- 
tures in  the  history  of  God's  dealings  with 
Israel  under  the  old  covenant.  Angels  are 
of  the  same  kingdom  as  we,  and  their  offices 
in  relation  to  that  Body  and  their  constant 
ministrations  to  its  members  are  continually 
brought  home  to  us  as  we  follow  the  narra- 
tives of  the  Gospels  and  the  writing  of  the 
first  pages  of  Church  history  in  the  Acts  and 
in  the  Epistles.  We  need  only  our  Lord's 
teaching  to  assure  us  of  the  ministry  of  an- 
gels in  behalf  of  men.  He  Himself  ex- 
perienced their  ministry  in  two  great  crises 
of  His  life.  When  the  devil  left  Him,  de- 
feated in  his  attempt  to  seduce  Him  from 

69 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

the  severities  of  His  mission,  *'  Angels  came 
and  ministered  unto  Him."  ^^  When  the 
end  of  that  tragedy  which  was  His  life  drew 
near  and  He  was  passing  through  the  bitter 
agony  of  the  Garden  and  had  offered  Him- 
self wholly  to  His  Father's  wall  then,  as  so 
often  happens  when  God  declines  to  grant 
our  will,  He  sends  strength  to  carry  out  His 
will ;  "  And  there  appeared  an  angel  unto 
him  from  heaven,  strengthening  him.''  ^^  It 
w^as  but  a  little  later  that  He  declared  the 
entire  willingness  of  His  death  in  that  it  was 
even  now^  avoidable  did  He  will  to  call  for 
heavenly  rescue,  when  He  rebuked  the  rash 
resistence  of  St.  Peter;  ''  Thinkest  thou  that 
I  cannot  now  pray  to  my  Father,  and  he 
shall  presently  give  me  more  than  twelve 
legions  of  angels."  ^^  That  we  too  have 
a  share  in  the  ministrations  of  heaven  He 
declared  when  He  taught  us  of  our  Guardian 
Angels ;  "  I  say  unto  you,  that  in  heaven  their 
angels  do  always  behold  the  face  of  my  Fa- 
ther which  is  in  heaven."  ^^     The  ministry 

27  St.  Mat.  4:11. 

28  St.  Lk.  22  :  43. 

29  St.  Mat.  26  :  S3. 

30  St.  Mat.  18 :  10. 

70 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

of  angels  to  men  is  the  familiar  experience 
of  the  Apostolic  Church.  The  angels  know 
what  is  taking  place  in  the  Church  and  are 
interested  in  it ;  "  For  I  think  that  God  hath 
set  forth  the  Apostles  last,  as  it  were  ap- 
pointed to  death :  for  we  are  made  a  spec- 
tacle unto  the  world,  and  to  angels,  and  to 
men."  ^^  But  specially  are  they  interested 
in  the  mystery  of  God's  purpose  unfolded 
in  the  Incarnation ;  "  Without  controversy 
great  is  the  mystery  of  godliness :  God  was 
manifested  in  the  flesh,  justified  in  the  spirit, 
seen  of  angels,  preached  unto  the  gentiles, 
believed  on  in  the  world,  received  up  into 
glory."  St.  Peter  reports  the  Gospel  as 
preached  by  the  Apostles  as  "  things  which 
the  angels  desire  to  look  into."  ^^  They  are 
part  of  the  heavenly  environment  of  the 
earthly  Church ;  "  Ye  are  come  unto  mount 
Zion,  and  unto  the  city  of  the  living  God, 
the  heavenly  Jerusalem,  and  to  an  innumer- 
able company  of  angels."  ^"^  Their  relation 
to  us  is  one  of  continual  ministry  ;  "  Are  they 
not  all  ministering  spirits,  sent  forth  to  do 

31 1  Cor.  4:9. 

32  I  Tim.  3 :  16  and  I  Pet.  1:12. 

33Heb.  12:22. 

71 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

service  for  them  who  shall  be  the  heirs  of  sal- 
vation." ^^  They  are  filled  with  rejoicing 
at  the  triumphs  of  God's  grace ;  "  I  say  unto 
you,  that  there  is  joy  in  the  presence  of  the 
angels  of  God  over  one  sinner  that  repent- 
eth."  35 


VIII 


The  question  we  are  tempted  to  raise,  why, 
if  there  are  also  ministries  of  the  saints  of 
any  sort  to  their  brethren  on  the  earth,  we  do 
not  find  the  fullness  of  allusion  to  them  that 
we  do  to  the  ministry  of  angels,  almost  an- 
swers itself.  The  saint  is  a  product  of  the 
Incarnation,  and  heaven  became  populous 
with  saints  only  as  the  harvest  of  sanctity 
sown  by  the  Incarnate  Word  was  gathered 
in  after  the  Ascension  of  our  Lord  and  the 
work  of  His  Spirit  in  the  Body  of  His  In- 
carnation. Its  knowledge  of  the  ministry 
of  angels  the  Church  inherited  from  the 
revelation  of  the  old  covenant,  and  had  only 
to  confirm  and  enrich  by  its  own  ever-widen- 
ing experience.     A  knowledge  of  its  relation 

3*  Heb.  1 :  14. 
85  St.  Lk.  15 :  10. 

72 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

to  the  saints  with  God  had  to  be  experienced 
and  thought  out  as  more  and  more  of  the 
brotherhood  passed  to  be  *'  with  Christ " ; 
and  especially  as  the  hosts  of  the  martyrs 
thronged  the  ascent  of  heaven.  Then  the 
heart  of  the  Church  followed  those  it  loved, 
and  the  busy  thought  and  glowing  prayers 
that  were  called  out  by  the  new  aspect  that 
death  had  acquired  through  the  transform- 
ing power  of  our  Lord's  death  and  resur- 
rection led  them  to  try  to  make  clear  the 
mutual  obligations  and  privileges  growing 
out  of  the  fact  that  all  —  both  quick  and 
dead  —  live  unto  God  as  the  members  of 
His  dear  Son. 

There  was  never  any  doubt  at  all  in  the 
mind  of  the  Church  as  to  its  own  obligation, 
or  rather  its  own  blessed  privilege,  to  pray 
for  those  who  had  passed  through  the  grave 
and  gate  of  death  to  a  nearer  and  more 
clearly  realized  union  with  our  Lord.  As 
v/as  the  case  with  the  knowledge  of  the  min- 
istry of  angels,  so  the  duty  and  privilege  of 
praying  for  the  dead  came  to  the  Church  by 
inheritance  from  the  old  covenant.  The 
earliest  Christian  graves  we  know  bear  on 
them  inscriptions  which  embody  prayers  for 

7Z 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

the  loved  ones  whose  mortal  bodies  had  been 
laid  within  them.  The  earliest  Liturgies 
which  have  come  to  us  contain  prayers  for 
all  the  holy  dead.  The  writings  of  the  early 
Christians  raise  no  doubt  in  the  matter.  For 
centuries  there  was  no  pause  in  the  ceaseless 
stream  of  prayers  that  flowed  from  the 
Church  on  earth  through  the  gates  of  heaven. 
Nor  was  there  any  doubt  in  the  Church  on 
earth  that  these  ascending  prayers  met  and 
mingled  with  the  prayers  of  the  ever-increas- 
ing multitudes  of  the  pure  ones  who  sing 
about  the  throne  of  God  and  of  the  Lamb 
and  who  follow  the  Lamb  whithersoever  He 
goeth.  Nor  was  there  any  doubt  of  the 
right  of  those  who  were  still  here  in  the  pil- 
grim state  —  in  via  —  to  cry  to  the  saints 
who  are  with  God  for  the  aid  of  their  inter- 
cessions —  no  more  doubt  than  there  was 
of  their  right  to  ask  the  aid  of  the  prayers 
of  the  neighbor  who  knelt  beside  them  at 
the  early  Mass.  Then  the  Reformation 
came,  and  an  awful,  heart-chilling  silence 
fell  over  large  parts  of  the  world  that  still 
professed  the  Name  of  Christ. 


74 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 


IX 


Such  is  the  doctrine  of  the  Communion 
of  Saints  as  it  has  grown  to  expression 
through  the  age-long  experience  of  the  Cath- 
oHc  Church.  It  was  out  of  these  various 
elements  of  Christian  thought  and  experience 
that  this  article  of  the  Creed  grew.  We 
must  remember  that  any  article  of  the  Creed 
or  of  Catholic  theology  has  a  history,  and 
can  only  be  understood  in  relation  to  that 
history.  An  article  of  the  Creed  cannot 
mean  anything  that  we  may  happen  to  want 
it  to  mean  to-day;  we  cannot  empty  it  of 
a  good  part  of  its  content  and  still  go  on 
flattering  ourselves  that  we  are  holding  the 
Faith,  The  Faith  is  a  thing  committed,  and 
what  has  been  actually  committed  we  learn 
from  a  study  of  the  past.  The  Communion 
of  Saints,  we  recall,  was  inserted  in  the 
Creed  and  became  an  article  of  faith  of 
universal  obligation,  early  in  the  fifth  cen- 
tury :  its  actual  content,  therefore,  is  the 
content  of  the  Christian  thought  about  the 
Communion  of  Saints  at  that  time.  By  that 
time,  as  we  shall  see  later  on,  the  meaning 

75 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

of  the  Apostolic  teaching  about  the  Body  of 
Christ  and  of  the  relations  of  the  members 
of  that  Body  one  to  another,  had  been 
worked  out  by  a  Christian  experience  of 
four  centuries.  Christians  had  long  been 
praying  for  the  dead,  invoking  the  prayers 
of  the  dead,  and  experiencing  the  blessings 
that  came  to  them  through  the  intercessions 
of  their  brethren  who  were  "  with  Christ." 
The  only  doubt  that  was  ever  raised  as  to 
the  right  and  the  utility  of  invoking  the  inter- 
cessions of  the  dead  came  now  and  again 
from  a  strayed  heretic  who  was  promptly 
repudiated  by  the  Catholic  mind  and  whose 
errors  only  served  to  put  in  a  clearer  light 
the  mind  of  the  Church  in  consequence  of 
the  utterances  of  Christian  doctors  called  out 
in  refutation  of  his  error.  When  the  article, 
"  I  believe  in  the  Communion  of  Saints," 
went  into  the  Creed,  it  connoted  the  fully  de- 
veloped doctrine  of  the  fifth  century  and  it 
must  connote  that  doctrine  to-day. 


X 

It  cannot  be  said  that  the  theologians  of 
the  Anglican  Church  since  the  Reformation 

76 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

have  shown  much  understanding,  or  pointed 
the  way  to  much  practical  use,  of  the  Com- 
munion of  Saints.  I  shall  later  take  up  the 
subject  of  the  action  of  the  Anglican  Church 
at  the  period  of  the  Reformation;  but  what- 
ever was  done  at  that  time,  it  is  certain  that 
all  cultus  of  the  Saints  disappeared  not  only 
from  the  Anglican  formularies  of  worship 
but  from  Anglican  belief  and  practice.  We 
may  perhaps  take  Bishop  Pearson  as  a  per- 
fectly representative  theologian  of  the  Stuart 
period  —  Dr.  Sweete  calls  him  "  the  Aquinas 
of  the  Anglican  Communion."  Pearson  is 
not  a  victim  of  that  high  Anglican  insularity 
which  holds  that  none  of  the  Saints  are  in 
heaven :  "  All  those,"  he  says,  "  which  were 
spoken  of  as  saints  then  in  earth,  if  truly 
such  and  departed  so,  are  now,  and  shall 
forever  continue,  saints  in  heaven."  ^^  He 
goes  on  to  state  the  doctrine  of  the  Commun- 
ion of  Saints  in  very  clear  and  unmistakable 
terms :  "  The  Saints  of  God  living  in  the 
Church  of  Christ,  are  in  communion  with 
all  the  saints  departed  out  of  this  life,  and 
admitted  to  the  presence  of  God.  Indeed 
the  Communion  of  Saints  in  the  Church  of 
36  Pearson,  On  the  Creed,  pp.  625-6. 

77 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Christ  with  those  which  are  departed  is  dem- 
onstrated by  their  communion  with  the  saints 
aHve.  For  if  I  have  communion  with  a 
saint  of  God,  as  such,  while  he  Hveth  here,  I 
must  still  have  communion  with  him  when 
he  is  departed  hence ;  because  the  foundation 
of  that  communion  cannot  be  removed  by 
death.  The  mystical  union  between  Christ 
and  His  Church,  the  spiritual  conjunction 
of  the  members  to  the  Head,  is  the  true 
foundation  of  that  communion  which  one 
member  hath  with  another,  all  members  liv- 
ing and  increasing  by  the  same  influence 
which  they  receive  from  Him.  But  death, 
which  is  nothing  else  but  the  separation  of 
the  soul  from  the  body,  maketh  no  separa- 
tion in  the  mystical  union,  no  breach  of 
the  spiritual  conjunction;  consequently  there 
must  continue  the  same  communion,  because 
there  remaineth  the  same  foundation.  In- 
deed, the  saint  departed,  before  his  death, 
had  some  communion  with  the  hypocrite, 
as  hearing  the  Word,  professing  the  faith, 
receiving  the  Sacraments  together;  which 
being  in  things  only  external,  as  they  were 
common  to  them  both,  and  all  such  external 
action  ceasing  in  the  person  dead,  the  hypo- 

78 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

crite  remaining  loseth  all  communion  with 
the  saint  departed,  and  the  saint  surviving 
ceases  to  have  farther  fellowship  with  the 
hypocrite  dying.  But  being  the  true  and 
unfeigned  holiness  of  man,  wrought  by  the 
powerful  influence  of  the  Spirit  of  God,  not 
only  remaineth,  but  also  is  improved  after 
death;  being  the  correspondence  of  the  in- 
ternal holiness  was  the  true  communion  be- 
tween their  persons  in  their  life,  they  cannot 
be  said  to  be  divided  by  death,  which  has 
no  power  over  that  sanctity  by  which  they 
were  first  conjoined."  ^"^  But  when  it  comes 
to  the  actual  working  out  of  any  practical 
application  of  this  doctrine  there  is  an  inex- 
plicable failure. 

We  may,  perhaps,  take  Dr.  Sweete  as 
representative  of  the  conservative  Anglican- 
ism of  to-day,  which  aims  to  preserve  the 
Caroline  tradition.  He  is  however  weaker 
than  Pearson  in  that  he  seems  to  hold  that 
the  Saints  have  not  yet  been  admitted  to 
heaven.  This  and  other  Anglican  failures  to 
grasp  the  fullness  of  Catholic  doctrine  is 
due  to  an  over-emphasis  on  the  value  of  the 
utterances  of  the  primitive  Fathers.  The 
37  Ibid.,  pp.  530-1. 

79 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

primitive  Church  has  no  peculiar  authority; 
whatever  authority  it  has  is  not  because  it  is 
primitive  but  because  it  is  Church.  In  some 
ways  the  utterances  of  the  writers  of  the 
second  century  which  have  come  down  to  us, 
represent  a  tentative  and  immature  attempt 
to  think  out  the  data  of  the  Christian  revela- 
tion. No  one,  for  example,  would  care  to 
assent  to  all  that  they  say  about  our  Lord  or 
about  the  Holy  Spirit.  We  do  not  think  that 
their  utterances  are  heretical  because  some 
of  them  fall  quite  short  of  the  later  dogmatic 
formularies  of  the  Church  ;  but  we  think  that 
they  represent  an  immature  stage  of  thought 
as  compared  with  the  stage  of  the  great 
theologians  of  the  fourth  century.  Thus 
some  of  their  utterances  in  regard  to  the 
state  of  the  dead  show,  in  the  light  of  later 
Christian  conclusions,  that  they  had  not 
thought  out  their  premises.  This  weakness, 
which  is  quite  easy  to  understand  in  the 
case  of  such  writers  as  St.  Justin  Martyr 
for  example,  ought  not  to  lead  astray  a  stu- 
dent like  Dr.  Sweete.  He  sa)^s :  "  Were 
the  spirits  of  believers  received  at  death  into 
heaven?  Or  did  they  await  the  resurrection 
in  an  intermediate  state  ?     This  was  the  first 

80 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

question  that  demanded  an  answer;  and  the 
answer  was  given  by  the  Church  of  the 
second  century  with  no  uncertain  voice.  An 
immediate  reception  into  heaven  seemed  to 
carry  with  it  the  abandonment  of  belief  in 
the  resurrection  of  the  body,  and  it  gave  to 
the  disciple  an  advantage  which  the  Master 
had  not  claimed;  for  did  not  Christ  himself 
descend  into  Hades  before  He  ascended  into 
heaven?  Catholic  Christians,  therefore, 
from  the  time  of  Justin  and  Irenaeus  thought 
of  the  souls  of  the  departed  as  in  an  expect- 
ant attitude  which  was  neither  heaven  nor 
hell;  but  while  all  awaited  the  final  Judg- 
ment, the  godly  awaited  it  in  a  better  place, 
and  the  unrighteous  in  a  worse."  ^^ 

But  even  were  it  true  that  the  saints  are 
not  yet  in  heaven  —  a  belief  quite  contrary 
to  the  theology  of  the  Catholic  Church,  an- 
cient and  modern,  Eastern  and  Western  — 
I  fail  to  see  that  that  fact  has  any  vital  bear- 
ing on  the  belief  in  the  validity  of  the  In- 
vocation of  Saints.  In  whatever  part  of 
the  universe  we  may  conceive  the  Saints  to 
be  they  are  still  living  members  of  the  Body 
of  Christ  —  they  still  live  unto  God  and  unto 

58  Sweete,  The  Holy  Catholic  Church,  p.  214. 

8i 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

their  brethren.  Their  separation  from  us 
and  our  ignorance  of  their  exact  state,  as 
Dr.  Sweete  himself  sees,  constitute  no  ob- 
stacle to  communion;  and  his  objection  that 
our  ignorance  of  the  conditions  under  which 
they  live  is  such  an  obstacle  would  seem  to 
have  no  weight.'"^^  My  prayers  for  others, 
and  my  desire  for  their  prayers  for  me,  is  not 
conditioned  on  knowledge  of  intimate  detail 
of  our  lives :  the  prayer  we  are  thinking  of 
is  essentially  the  expression  of  our  love  one 
to  another.     I  may  know  nothing  about  my 

39  "  We  know  ourselves  to  be  in  communion  with 
tens  of  thousands  of  Hving  saints  who  are  equally 
unknown  to  us.  A  common  faith  and  hope  and  love, 
common  sacraments,  a  common  aim  in  life,  the  pos- 
session of  the  same  Spirit  of  grace,  membership  in 
the  same  Divine  family,  draw  together  Christian 
people  in  every  part  of  the  globe ;  and  this  experience 
encourages  the  hope  that  communion  with  the  faith- 
ful departed  is  not  hindered  by  the  mere  fact  that 
they  are  beyond  sight  and  hearing,  and  that  even 
their  names,  except  in  the  case  of  a  few  relations 
and  friends  or  of  greater  saints,  are  wholly  un- 
known. A  more  serious  obstacle  to  fellowship  with 
the  dead  lies  in  our  ignorance  of  the  conditions  under 
which  they  live.  We  cannot  realize  the  order  into 
which  they  have  passed ;  it  is  beyond  our  cognizance, 
and  very  little  has  been  revealed  to  us  about  their 
state,  beyond  the  fact  that  they  exist,  are  conscious, 
and  are  with  Christ."     Sweete,  Ibid.,  p.  211, 

82 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

dead  friend  but  that  he  exists  and  is,  I  be- 
heve,  with  Christ.  But  I  still  love  him  and 
want  to  express  my  love.  Prayer  is  the  out- 
let for  my  love  under  present  circumstances. 
I  know  that  my  friend  still  loves  me  and  that 
prayer  will  be  the  available  means  of  his 
spiritual  approach  to  me  also.  It  is  not  in 
either  case  necessary  that  details  of  life 
should  be  known  —  though  I  am  not  pre- 
pared to  admit  that  they  are  not  known  in 
some  degree. 

In  fact  one  feels  that  back  of  this  con- 
servative Anglican  teaching  there  is  not  a 
solidly  thought  out  theology,  but  a  refusal 
to  think  beyond  a  certain  point  because  of 
a  kind  of  timidity  as  to  consequences.  Dr. 
vSweete  says:  ''The  intercession  of  the 
saints  at  rest  is  a  legitimate  and  necessary 
consequence  of  the  fellowship  in  prayer  that 
unites  the  whole  Body  of  Christ.  The  in- 
vocation of  departed  saints  is  a  practice 
based  upon  this  truth,  which  is  neither  primi- 
tive nor  universal,  and  which  has  been  found 
to  be  dangerous.  It  is  earnestly  to  be  hoped 
that  no  false  sentiment  may  lead  members  of 
the  English  Church  who  realize  the  need  of 
closer  communion  with  the  holy  dead  to  fall 

83 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

back  upon  so  precarious  a  way  of  obtaining 
it."  ^"  Again,  it  is  quite  illegitimate  to  iso- 
late the  teaching  of  the  Church  for  a  couple 
of  centuries,  and  those  the  centuries  when  it 
was  just  beginning  the  process  of  formulat- 
ing the  truths  committed  to  it  —  just  begun 
to  talk,  as  it  were  —  and  set  them  in  oppo- 
sition to  all  the  rest  of  Christian  teaching. 
That  is  not  the  appeal  of  the  Anglican  com- 
munion as  we  shall  see  later. 


XI 

If  we  now  turn  back  to  the  history  of 
the  Church  and  inquire  as  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  practice  of  the  Invocation  of 

*^  Still  less  legitimate  are  attempts  to  prevent  the 
practice  of  the  Invocation  of  Saints  by  utterances 
like  the  following.  The  late  Bp.  John  Wordsworth 
in  the  Preface  to  his  pamphlet,  The  Invocation  of 
Saints  and  the  Twenty-Second  Article,  says,  **  But 
if  they  still  continue  to  circulate  books  recommend- 
ing it  (Invocation),  and  to  inculcate  the  practice 
upon  the  young  .  .  .  they  must  expect  to  be  openly 
and  individually  rebuked,  and  to  bear  the  reproach 
of  being  disturbers  of  the  peace  and  work,  as  well 
as  in  some  degree,  of  the  faith  of  the  Church."  This 
is  truly  Papal. 

84 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

the  Saints  —  what  was  the  ground  for  ask- 
ing for  the  prayers  of  the  dead  —  we  are  met 
by  the  naked  denial  on  the  part  of  certain 
writers  that  praying  to  the  dead  is  in  any 
way  involved  in  the  Church's  faith  in  the 
Communion  of  Saints,  but  rather  that  it  is 
a  practice  taken  over  bodily  from  Paganism : 
that  the  cultus  of  Pagan  divinities  was  sim- 
ply transferred  to  the  Church.  That  in 
many  places,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  Saint 
is  simply  the  local  Pagan  deity  renamed. 
This  of  course  was  the  contention  of  many 
Protestants  at  the  time  of  the  Reformation 
and  since.  From  their  point  of  view  one  of 
the  great  achievements  of  the  Reformation 
was  the  cleansing  of  the  Church  from  Pagan- 
ism. It  is  also  the  contention  of  many  mod- 
ern Rationalist  writers,  especially  the  writ- 
ers upon  comparative  religion.  It  is  an  as- 
sertion which,  unfortunately,  is  taken  up  by 
a  certain  number  of  Anglican  students.  Dr. 
Bigg  will  serve  as  an  example.  In  his  de- 
lightful Wayside  Sketches  in  Ecclesiastical 
History  he  says :  **  These  kindly  Saints  who 
take  their  people  as  they  find  them  and  do 
not  ask  too  much,  have  stepped  into  the  va- 
cant place  of  the  good  little  household  gods, 

85 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

the  Lares  and  Penates,  who  love  the  poor, 
and  allowed  themselves  to  be  beaten  when 
things  went  wrong.  We  see  also  something 
of  the  methods  of  the  first  missionaries. 
They  did  not  pitch  their  expectations  too 
high.  People  brought  cattle  and  sacrificed 
them  before  the  church  of  Felix,  just  as 
they  had  done  before  the  temple  of  Venus. 
There  would  be  a  difference  in  the  ritual  and 
the  flesh  was  distributed  among  the  poor 
pilgrims,  but  the  Campanian  peasant  would 
see  little  change."  ^^ 

This  is  a  little  too  facile  to  be  convincing. 
There  was  no  doubt,  especially  in  the  early 
Middle  Ages,  a  certain  amount  of  borrow- 
ing from  Pagan  sources  and  adaptation  of 
Pagan  rites.  It  may  have  happened  now 
and  again  that  a  Christian  Saint  slipped 
quietly  into  the  place  of  a  Pagan  god.  There 
may  have  been  blunders  by  which  the  two 
were  confused.  But  such  things  will  have 
been  quite  exceptional  in  the  life  of  the 
Church  and  not  in  any  time  or  place  the  rule 
of  its  action.  I  do  not  know  that  any  one 
has  had  the  temerity  to  assert  outright  that 
the  practice  of  asking  the  prayers  of  the 
41  Bigg,  p.  49. 

86 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Departed  has  no  root  in  Christianity  but  is 
purely  a  Pagan  graft.  But  the  impression 
produced  by  the  citing  of  what  has  the  ap- 
pearance of  borrowing  from  Pagan  worship 
is  that  there  was  and  would  have  been  no 
Invocation  of  Saints  in  the  Church  had  it 
not  been  for  Pagan  influences. 

There  are  several  facts  that  seem  to  me 
decisively  to  counter  that.  The  practice  of 
asking  for  the  prayers  of  the  Dead  grew  up 
in  the  Church  without  any  noticeable  op- 
position. Any  one  at  all  familiar  with  early 
Christian  history  knows  that  the  temper  of 
the  leaders  of  the  Church  was  not  one  that 
was  easily  imposed  upon  by  extra-Christian 
innovations.  The  most  outstanding  feature 
of  the  great  Christian  theologians  of  the  first 
six  centuries  was  their  jealousy  of  all  in- 
croachments  upon  or  false  interpretations  of 
the  faith  they  believed  themselves  to  have 
received  from  the  Apostles.  The  reproach 
that  is  usually  thrown  at  them  is  that  they 
were  a  set  of  narrow-minded  bigots,  whose 
thought  was  constantly  occupied  with  heresy 
hunting.  And  if  there  was  any  one  fact  on 
which  they  were  particularly  sensitive  to 
error  it  was  upon  the  uniqueness  of  God. 

87 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Their  first  great  battle  was  to  prevent  that 
particular  inroad  of  Paganism  which  would 
have  reduced  our  Lord  to  the  rank  of  a  demi- 
god. The  whole  history  of  the  Conciliar 
period  is  the  history  of  a  battle  for  the  full 
Deity  of  Christ  in  the  background  of  which 
was  the  profound  conviction  that  there  is 
only  one  God.  And  yet  we  are  asked  to 
believe  that  during  this  same  period  these 
same  Church  leaders  were  good-naturedly 
tolerating,  if  not  cooperating  in,  a  move- 
ment which  was  rapidly  bringing  back  into 
the  worship  of  the  Church  that  degradation 
of  the  notion  of  God  which  they  were,  in 
their  character  as  champions  of  Orthodoxy, 
spending  their  lives  to  oppose. 

We  must  guard  ourselves  carefully  from 
permitting  a  chronological  separation  in 
these  two  movements  —  one  towards  stren- 
uous Orthodoxy  and  the  other  toward  a 
toleration  of  Paganism.  It  is  not  that  the 
rigid  orthodoxy  of  the  Church  relaxed  after 
a  time  and  that  then  Paganism  began  its  in- 
sidious entry  almost  unnoticed,  in  the  guise 
of  the  Invocation  of  the  Dead.  The  fact  is, 
as  we  shall  demonstrate  later,  that  precisely 
the  same  great  Doctors  of  the  Church  who 

88 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

fought  the  tremendous  battle  for  the  integ- 
rity of  the  Christian  notion  of  God  the 
Blessed  Trinity  and  of  the  Incarnation  are 
those  in  whose  writings  we  find  our  evidence 
for  the  legitimacy  of  the  practice  of  invok- 
ing the  prayers  of  the  Departed. 

And  further :  these  great  Christian  leaders, 
especially  in  the  earlier  stage  of  the  conflict, 
were  not  only  engaged  in  safe-guarding  the 
Christian  notion  of  God,  but  they  were  at 
the  same  time  engaged  in  a  life  and  death 
struggle  with  Paganism.  Is  it  to  be  believed 
that  the  men  who  stood  the  whole  shock  of 
the  Pagan  state,  who  offered  their  lives 
freely  for  the  defense  of  Christian  belief  and 
the  upholding  of  Christian  morals,  were  at 
the  same  time  taking  over,  or  countenanc- 
ing the  taking  over,  of  one  great  section  of 
P'agan  cultus?  It  will  take  much  more  evi- 
dence than  that  of  local  or  occasional  lapses 
into  Paganism  through  ignorance  or  blunder- 
ing to  convince  us  that  the  very  Saints  whom 
the  Universal  Church  honors  at  its  altars 
were  guilty  of  such  action. 

And  again:  we  are  not  ignorant  of  the 
history  of  Christian  missions  from  the  time 
of  St.  Paul  on.     Is  it  true  that  they  are  char- 

89 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

acterized  by  a  facile  eclecticism?  Is  it  true 
that  they  attempted  to  win  their  victories  by 
a  process  of  easy  compromise  with  Pagan- 
ism ?  Is  it  not  true,  rather,  that  the  books  of 
all  the  Rationalists  are  filled  with  denuncia- 
tions of  Christian  missionaries  because  of 
their  alleged  iconoclasm  —  their  needless 
destruction  of  things  good  and  beautiful  — 
their  narrow  and  ignorant  dealing  \Vith  the 
culture  of  the  nations  they  were  converting? 
Are  not  the  annals  of  missions  filled  with 
accounts  of  the  destruction  of  Pagan  temples 
and  deities,  and  the  Canons  of  Christian 
Councils  with  the  denunciation  of  Pagan 
practices  and  rites?  And  in  the  face  of  all 
this  we  are  asked  to  believe  that  the  worship 
of  Paganism  was  taken  over  and  engrafted 
upon  the  Church ! 

It  is  obvious  that  none  of  the  converts  to 
Christianity  would  come  to  their  new  re- 
ligion with  an  unoccupied  mind :  all  would 
come  out  of  an  environment  of  religious 
ideas  and  prepossessions  which  would  have 
to  be  wholly  eradicated  to  make  way  for 
the  new  faith,  or  be  modified  and  refashioned 
to  fit  it.  When  old  and  new  were  essen- 
tially alike  there  would  be  required  nothing 

90 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

more  than  a  redirection  of  activity.  For  ex- 
ample, Jew  and  Pagan  alike  came  to  Chris- 
tianity with  traditions  of  fasting:  they 
would  simply  need  to  be  taught  the  round  of 
Christian  fasts.  Both  alike  would  be  fa- 
miliar with  the  practice  of  praying  for  the 
dead,  and  would  find  their  ancestral  practice 
quite  harmonious  with  their  new  religion. 
In  the  case  of  both  Jew  and  Pagan  there 
were  broad  frontiers  of  contact  with  Chris- 
tianity which  would  accelerate  the  transition 
from  old  to  new.  There  were  also  sharp 
contrasts  and  oppositions  where  wrenching 
and  painful  sacrifices  would  be  required  as 
the  condition  of  obedience  to  Christ.  Where 
would  the  practice  of  asking  for  the  help 
of  the  dead  fall? 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  P&gan  world 
was  quite  accustomed  to  the  practice  of  in- 
voking the  dead.  Ancestor  worship  was 
widespread.  When  the  better  Pagan  minds 
thought  this  out  and  tried  to  find  a  rational 
basis  for  their  religious  cultus,  they  thought 
to  the  conclusion  of  a  single  divine  essence 
which,  however,  was  divisible  and  communi- 
cable. Of  this  essence  were  the  gods  of 
their  pantheon  and  also  the  souls  of  heroes 

91 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

and  virtuous  men.  Of  this  immortal  and 
divine  essence  was  the  gemus  which  sur- 
vived them  after  their  death  and  which  took 
its  place  in  the  circle  of  the  Immortals. 
This  was  the  object  of  their  cultus.  Each 
family  would  hold  that  its  own  ancestors  had 
their  place  among  the  Immortals  and  would 
make  them  the  object  of  a  special  cult."*^ 
"  There  was  no  recognized  system  of  canon- 
ization ;  the  family  would  create  its  own 
appropriate  hero,  and  the  mere  fact  of  death, 
the  passage  from  earth  into  the  unseen,  con- 
stituted a  claim  to  reverence  and  worship. 
Countless  inscriptions  belonging  to  the  pe- 
riod with  which  we  are  concerned  bear  wit- 
ness to  the  belief  in  the  general  power  of 
the  departed  to  assist  the  living.  Parents 
invoke  the  souls  of  their  children,  children 
the  souls  of  their  parents,  wives  and  hus- 
bands, brothers  and  sisters,  turn  each  to  the 
other,  the  living  to  the  dead,  for  help  and 
protection."  ^^  Unless  the  convert  from 
Paganism  found  something  in  Christianity 
which  denied  the  possibility  of  reaching  his 

*2  Tixeront,  Hist,  des  Dogmes,  Vol.  I,  p.  19. 
*3  Stewart,  Doctrina  Rom.  de  Invocat.  Sand.,  pp. 
44-5- 

92 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

dead  by  his  prayers ;  unless  he  found  that  his 
new  religion  raised  an  impassable  barrier  be- 
tween him  and  the  souls  of  the  departed; 
he  would  quite  simply  go  on  doing  much  as 
he  had  done.  But  in  fact,  he  would  find  the 
situation  even  cleared  for  him;  that  in  the 
case,  at  least,  of  those  of  his  loved  ones 
who  died  in  the  Lord,  he  was  not  to  be  sorry 
as  men  without  hope  because  he  was  as- 
sured that  they  were  safe  in  Christ.  He 
would  find  that  prayers  for  those  who  died 
in  the  Lord  were  uninterrupted  by  the  fact 
of  death.  Would  he  find  that  a  prohibition 
had  been  formulated  against  his  asking  for 
the  prayers  of  those  for  whom  he  prayed  — 
against  his  understanding  of  the  Communion 
of   Saints  as  looking  both   ways? 

I  do  not  know  of  any  ground  for  thinking 
that  he  would.  No  such  prohibition  any- 
where appears,  and  consequently  the  prac- 
tice of  invocation  would  have  gone  on,  so 
far  as  the  Pagan  convert  was  concerned. 
The  practice  would  fit  in  quite  naturally  with 
his  new  faith,  there  would  be  no  break  with 
the  past  in  this  respect.  There  would  no 
doubt  at  the  early  period  we  are  contemplat- 
ing be  no   formal  doctrine  of  Invocation. 

93 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

But  formal  doctrines  follow,  not  precede, 
practice.  The  history  of  dogmatic  develop- 
ment is  the  history  of  seeking  formal  ground 
for  the  justification  of  that  which  already  ex- 
ists. The  Church  did  not  wait  for  the  action 
of  the  Council  of  Nicaea  before  it  began  to 
worship  our  Lord.  There  would  have  been 
no  Council  of  Nicaea  if  the  Church  had  not 
already  been  worshiping  our  Lord  as  God. 
This  worship  of  the  Church  began  from  the 
day  of  its  origin,  and  it  settled  the  questions 
which  subtle  minds  raised  about  that  worship 
as  they  arose. 

These  words  of  Dr.  Goudge  put  the  mat- 
ter plainly.  "  There  is  always  a  great  dif- 
ference between  the  mind  of  the  theologian 
and  that  of  the  great  body  of  the  faithful, 
and  the  advantage  is  not  necessarily  all  on 
one  side.  Is  it  for  a  moment  likely  that  the 
thousands  of  simple  minded  converts  from 
heathenism  at  once  abandoned  the  attitude 
which  they  had  adopted  toward  their  dead? 
The  converts  in  Japan  to-day,  I  understand, 
are  not  at  all  disposed  to  do  so.  .  .  .  Why 
should  the  converts  of  the  early  Church  have 
done  so?  So  far  from  Christianity  destroy- 
ing the  basis  on  which  their  practice  had 

94 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

rested,  it  would  rather  have  strengthened 
it.  It  would  have  made  their  sense  of  union 
with  the  departed  deeper  than  it  had  been 
before;  it  would  have  afforded  a  stronger 
rather  than  a  weaker  support  to  belief  in  the 
activity  of  the  dead  in  the  unseen  world. 
If  they  had  hoped  for  help  from  the  dead 
before,  we  may  be  sure  that  they  continued 
to  hope  for  it;  if  they  had  paid  honors  to 
the  heroes  of  the  heathen  world,  we  may  be 
sure  that  they  would  pay  them  to  the  heroes 
of  the  Faith."  '' 

It  need  not  be  denied  that  the  process 
indicated  would  have  its  dangers.  But  the 
early  Christian  community  had  not  that  fear 
of  the  dangers  of  religion  which  has  become 
so  marked  a  characteristic  of  the  churches  of 
the  Anglican  rite.  As  the  Pagan  stream 
flowed  into  the  Church  it  brought  with  it 
certain  crudities  of  thought  and  action  which 
tended  to  lower  the  ideals  of  the  Christian 
standards.  There  has  been  prevalent  at 
every  age  of  the  Church's  progress  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  superstition.  What  the 
Church  is  trying  to  do  is  to  take  the  crude 

**  Goudge,  The  Invocation  of  Saints  and  the  Cult 
of  the  Blessed  Virgin,  pp.  i6  and  17. 

95 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

material  and  refashion  it  and  convert  it  to 
its  own  use.  This  takes  time.  The  Church 
took  in  the  heathen  on  the  basis  of  a  posi- 
tive instruction  for  Baptism  which  differed 
in  amount  and  thoroughness  from  time  to 
time  and  from  place  to  place.  If  some 
heathen  thoughts  and  practices  lingered  in 
the  life  of  the  newly  converted  that  is  not 
strange;  nor  is  it  unparalleled  in  our  own 
contemporary  experience.  The  Church  to- 
day takes  in  great  numbers  of  Protestants 
and  leaves  them  very  much  untouched  as  to 
their  religious  ideas.  There  are  many  Pro- 
testant parishes  in  the  Church  which  are 
using  a  Prayer  Book  which  they  do  not  at  all 
understand  and  upon  which  they  are  impos- 
ing an  interpretation  drawn  from  their  an- 
cestral Protestantism.  It  is  no  doubt  true 
that  the  popular  mind  has  in  times  and  places 
misunderstood  the  use  of  invocation  and 
has  prayed  to  the  Saints  as  though  they  had 
original  power.  But  are  we  to  revise  our 
religion  on  the  basis  of  leaving  out  every- 
thing that  has  been  or  can  be  abused?  Is 
it  not  true  that  many  people  in  the  Church 
misconceive  the  doctrine  of  the  Blessed  Trin- 
ity?    Do  they  not  in  fact  pray  to  the  three 

96 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Sacred  Persons  as  though  they  were  three 
separate  gods?  In  particular  do  they  not 
in  the  Hght  of  their  understanding  or  mis- 
understanding of  our  Lord's  mediatorial 
office  plead  with  Him  to  stand  between  them 
and  an  angry  God,  very  much  as  the  Italian 
peasant  is  alleged  to  plead  with  the  Blessed 
Virgin  for  protection?  Are  we  to  give  up 
the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity,  or  are  we  to  try 
to  enlighten  people  as  to  the  meaning  of  that 
dogma  of  our  religion?  It  would  seem  that 
we  are  to  blame,  not  the  peasant,  but  the 
Roman  authorities  which  allow  the  use  of 
forms  that  are  misleading.  But  I  do  not  see 
why,  either  because  of  the  error  of  the  Ro- 
man authorities  or  of  the  peasant,  I  should 
deny  the  practice  of  Invocation. 


XII 

We  shall  not  expect  to  find  invocations  of 
the  dead  in  the  Old  Testament  because  the 
Communion  of  Saints  in  the  sense  of  the 
Creed  was  impossible  until  the  Incarnation 
and  work  of  our  Lord  had  opened  heaven  to 
all  believers.     Neither  had  the  Old  Testa- 

97 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

ment  worked  out  a  consistent  eschatology. 
The  revelation  of  the  Old  Testament  and 
the  work  of  its  heroes  and  prophets  was 
primarily  concerned  with  the  kingdom  of 
God  on  earth,  which  was  the  present  sphere 
of  God's  manifestation  and  the  treasury  of 
the  promises  which  illumined  the  future.  In 
this  national  vocation  of  Israel  the  world  be- 
yond the  grave  played  no  part.  And  yet 
it  cannot  be  that  human  beings  anywhere 
are  without  interest  in  that  world.  What- 
ever may  be  man's  primary  interest  and  what- 
ever his  beliefs,  he  cannot  stand  beside  the 
graves  of  those  whom  he  has  loved  without 
questionings  as  to  the  future  arising  in  his 
mind.  And  although  the  revealed  religion 
of  Israel  concerned  itself  with  the  fortunes 
of  the  kingdom  in  the  world  and  of  the  Is- 
raelites' relation  to  that ;  and  held  them  firm 
in  their  devotion  to  it  by  faith  in  the  prom- 
ises of  the  coming  of  God  with  power  to 
rescue  Israel  from  the  hands  of  its  enemies; 
and  closed  its  vision  of  the  future,  now  with 
the  song  of  triumph  floating  over  the  field 
of  Israel's  victory,  and  now  with  the  terri- 
fying catastrophe  of  the  Day  of  the  Lord, 
which  is  only  darkness  and  not  light;  yet 

98 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

here  and  there  in  the  record  of  Israel's 
thought  we  catch  glimpses  of  its  belief  in  a 
life  following  death,  and  also  some  hints  of 
what  the  current  conceptions  of  that  life 
were.  It  was  from  this  background  of  be- 
liefs in  the  unseen  world  beyond  that  the 
Jewish  convert  would  emerge  to  take  up 
the  revelation  of  the  Gospel  and  begin  the 
process  of  the  readjustment  of  old  and  new. 
The  outstanding  feature  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, its  insistence  that  all  religion  is  reve- 
lation, that  the  very  minutiae  of  its  laws 
were  enacted  by  God,  carries  with  it  a  keen 
sense  of  the  interest  of  heaven  in  earth. 
The  Israelites'  conception  of  the  heavenly 
world,  so  far  as  it  went,  was  clear  enough. 
It  was  not  the  world  of  philosophy,  vacant 
save  for  the  presence  of  a  god  vaguely  con- 
ceived; it  was  a  populous  world,  filled  with 
angelic  presences,  and  their  constant  action 
on  behalf  of  men.  The  angels  were  the  or- 
dinary executants  of  the  will  of  God,  of 
whose  ministries  the  Fathers  had  had  con- 
stant experience.  Hardly  a  striking  event 
in  Israel's  history  was  unattended  by  an- 
gelic appearances  and  ministries.  It  is  need- 
less to  labor  this  point.     But  was  there  any 

99 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

human  interest  in  the  beyond?  This  con- 
stant tide  of  souls  which  poured  out  from 
human  life  —  were  they  conscious  and  inter- 
ested? The  Fathers,  the  national  heroes, 
the  great  prophets,  the  psalmists,  had  they 
passed  into  silence  and  away  from  all 
thought  and  care  for  those  for  whom  in  their 
life  time  they  had  so  passionately  labored? 
Was  it  to  be  conceived  that  the  interests 
of  the  Covenant  which  wTre  so  dear  to  the 
heart  of  God,  and  which  had  called  out  on 
the  part  of  His  servants  such  unlimited  self- 
sacrifice  that  they  had  willingly  poured  out 
their  Hves  unto  death,  had  now  ceased  to  in- 
terest them  at  all?  God's  interest  in  Israel 
went  on ;  and  was  it  to  be  conceived  that  the 
interest  of  an  Abraham,  a  Moses,  an  Isaiah 
had  ceased?  Or  w^as  it  to  be  conceived 
that  they  had  passed  out  of  relation  to  God's 
present  work  and  filled  their  lives  with  new 
interests?  What  we  should  look  for  in  the 
Old  Testament  is  some  indication  of  the  con- 
tinual interest  of  the  dead  in  what  had  been 
the  object  of  their  devotion  before  death, 
and  whether  it  was  conceived  that  there  was 
or  could  be  any  activity  appropriate  to  this 
interest. 

lOO 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

In  the  earliest  conceptions  of  Israel  as  to 
the  effect  of  death  we  find  that  death  was 
not  regarded  as  making  any  real  breach  in 
the  family.  The  family  was  a  unit  and  the 
fact  that  certain  members  of  it  had  died  does 
not  seem  to  have  been  understood  as  wholly 
removing  them  from  the  family.  The  com- 
mon synonym  for  death,  that  a  man  was 
gathered  to  his  people  or  his  fathers,  meant 
that  he  had  gone  to  join  that  part  of  his 
family  which  was  assembled  elsewhere. 
This  place  of  meeting  came  to  be  known  as 
Sheol,  the  common  dwelling-place  of  the 
dead.  Those  in  Sheol  were  not  conceived 
as  without  influence  on  those  members  of  the 
family  who  were  still  on  earth,  and  they 
themselves  were  influenced  by  the  fortunes 
of  their  living  descendants.^^ 

This  background  of  the  continued  inter- 
est of  the  dead  and  of  their  active  interest  as 
intercessors  for  their  brethren,  is  not  infre- 
quently indicated  in  the  Old  Testament. 
When  God  is  called  upon  to  **  remember  " 
His  servants  as  the  basis  of  an  appeal  of 
some  sort  made  to  Him,  the  clear  implica- 
tion is  of  a  world  in  which  these  same  serv- 

*5  Charles,  p.  27  ff. 

lOI 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

ants  were  active  and  the  friends  of  God; 
the  force  of  this  inference  is  increased  when 
we  recall  our  Lord's  exposition  of  the  title 
of  God,  as  the  God  of  Abraham,  of  Isaac, 
and  of  Jacob,  as  implying  their  continued 
existence  because  God  is  not  a  God  of  the 
dead  but  of  the  living.  It  is  in  the  hght 
of  this  general  principle  that  we  must  read 
Moses'  passionate  appeal  to  God  in  his  in- 
tercession for  Israel  after  the  sin  of  the 
Golden  Calf.  *'  Remember  Abraham,  Isaac, 
and  Israel,  thy  servants,  to  whom  thou 
swearest  by  thine  own  self,  and  saidst  unto 
them,  I  will  multiply  your  seed  as  the  stars 
of  heaven,  and  all  this  land  that  I  have 
spoken  of  will  I  give  unto  your  seed,  and 
they  shall  inherit  it  forever."  ^^  Through 
the  prophet  Jeremiah  God  protests  that  be' 
cause  of  the  sins  of  Israel  Pie  would  not 
spare  them  even  at  the  intercession  of  His 
greatest  saints.  **  Then  said  the  Lord  unto 
me,  though  Moses  and  Samuel  stood  before 
me,  yet  my  mind  could  not  be  toward  this 
people :  cast  them  out  of  my  sight,  and  let 
them  go  forth."  ^^     The  same  thought  is  in 

*«  Ex.  32:  13. 
47  Jer.  15: 1. 

102 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

God's  protest  through  Ezekiel.  "  Though 
these  three  men,  Noah,  Daniel,  and  Job,  were 
in  it,  yet  they  should  deliver  but  their  own 
souls  by  their  righteousness,  said  the 
Lord  GOD."  '^^  Again,  Isaiah's  appeal  to 
God  is  enforced  by  what  is  to  all  intents  an 
appeal  to  the  intercession  of  Israel  ances- 
tors who  are  almost  reproached  for  their 
forgetfulness  of  their  children.  "  Doubt- 
less thou  art  our  father,  though  Abraham 
be  ignorant  of  us,  and  Israel  acknowledge 
us  not."  '^^  The  same  thought  of  the  in- 
terest of  the  dead  is  found  in  the  Psalms. 
"  Lord,  remember  David,  in  all  his  afflictions 
.  .  .  for  thy  servant  David's  sake  turn  not 
away  the  face  of  thine  anointed."  ^^  And 
of  king  Abijah  it  is  said  that  "  Nevertheless 
for  David's  sake  did  the  Lord  his  God  give 
him  a  lamp  in  Jerusalem,  to  set  up  his  son 
after  him,  and  to  establish  Jerusalem."  ^^  A 
fuller  expression  of  this  belief  in  the  con- 
tinued interest  of  the  holy  men  of  Israel  in 
the  fortunes  of  their  descendants  is  found 
in  the  Second  Book  of  Maccabees  where 

*8  Ezek.  14 :  14. 
*»Is.  63: 16. 
50  Ps.  132 : 1  and  10. 
wi  Kg.  15:4. 

103 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Judas  sees  in  vision  Jeremiah  the  Prophet 
praying  for  Israel.  **  And  this  was  his 
vision :  that  Onias  who  had  been  high  priest, 
a  virtuous  and  a  good  man,  reverent  in  bear- 
ing, gentle  in  manner,  well  spoken  also  and 
exercised  from  a  child  in  all  points  of  virtue, 
holding  up  his  hands  prayed  for  the  whole 
body  of  the  Jews.  This  done,  in  like  man- 
ner there  appeared  a  man  with  gray  hairs, 
and  exceeding  glorious,  who  was  of  a  won- 
derful and  excellent  majesty.  Then  Onias 
answered,  saying,  this  is  a  lover  of  the 
brethren,  who  prayeth  much  for  the  people, 
and  for  the  holy  city,  Jeremiah  the  prophet 
of  God."  ^2  Finally,  this  state  of  the  dead, 
from  which  we  shall  certainly  be  able  to  in- 
fer the  fact  of  their  interest  in  and  inter- 
cession for  their  brethren  is  marvelously  de- 
picted in  a  well  known  passage  in  the  book 
of  Wisdom.  ''  But  the  souls  of  the  right- 
eous are  in  the  hands  of  God,  and  there  shall 
no  torment  touch  them.  In  the  sight  of  the 
unwise  they  seem  to  die :  and  their  departure 
is  taken  for  misery;  and  their  going  from  us 
to  be  utter  destruction :  but  they  are  in  peace. 
For  though  they  be  punished  in  the  sight  of 
''^  II  Mac.  15 :  12-14. 

104 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

men,  yet  is  their  hope  full  of  immortality. 
And  having  been  a  little  chastised,  they  shall 
be  greatly  rewarded :  for  God  proved  them, 
and  found  them  worthy  of  Himself.  As  the 
gold  in  the  furnace  hath  He  tried  them,  and 
received  them  as  a  burnt  offering.  And  in 
the  time  of  their  visitation  they  shall  shine, 
and  shall  run  to  and  fro  like  sparks  among 
the  stubble.  They  shall  judge  the  nations, 
and  have  dominion  over  the  peoples,  and  the 
Lord  shall  reign  over  them  for  ever  and 
ever."  °^ 

With  these  prepossessions  the  Jew  would 
come  to  the  Gospel.  And  what  would  he 
find  there?  Would  he  be  told  that  his 
thought  was  erroneous,  and  that  the  dead 
of  his  nation  had  ceased  to  take  or  to  ex- 
press any  interest  in  it;  that  those  of  his 
family  whom  he  had  buried  were  dead  to 
him  and  to  the  world,  and  that  the  best  that 
he  could  do  would  be  to  forget  them?  Not 
at  all.  He  would  rather  find  a  clearing  up  of 
his  vague  notion  of  immortality,  and  an  ex- 
plication of  the  real  ground  henceforth  of 
the  relation  of  the  living  and  the  dead  on 
the  basis  of  their  union  in  Christ.     What- 

53  Wis.  3 :  i-^. 

105 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

ever  practices  he  may  have  been  accustomed 
to  as  a  mode  of  expressing  his  relation  to 
the  dead  v^ere,  for  the  time  being,  so  far 
as  we  can  see,  left  untouched,  awaiting  the 
action  of  the  mature  thought  of  the  Church 
upon  them.  This  background  then  of  a  be- 
lief in  the  existence  of  the  blessed  dead 
**  with  God  " ;  a  belief  that  the  living  should 
pray  for  the  dead;  a  belief  in  the  continued 
interest  of  the  dead  in  the  living  and  of  their 
intercession  for  them;  a  belief  that  in  our 
prayers  to  God  we  may  appeal  to  Him  on 
the  basis  of  the  intercessions  of  the  dead  — 
all  this  constitutes  the  not  inconsiderable 
data  from  which  the  early  Jewish  convert  to 
Christianity  set  out  to  shape  his  belief  in 
the  Commimion  of  Saints  with  the  aid  of  the 
added  data  furnished  by  the  new  revelation 
in  Christ. 

What  the  convert  would  learn  of  the  dead 
from  his  new  religion  is  that  they  were  "  liv- 
ing unto  God,"  ^^  and  that  they  are  "  in 
Christ,"  and  that  therefore  he  was  not  to 
sorrow  for  them  "  as  others  who  have  no 
hope,"  ^^  and  that,  far  from  having  passed 

54  St.  Lk.  20:38. 
5^1  Thess.  4:  13  ff. 

106 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

into  a  state  in  which  they  had  no  relation  to 
their  friends  on  earth  they  are  still  of  the 
same  Body-^^  This  would  be  quite  a  suffi- 
cient basis  for  continuing  their  practice  of 
asking  for  the  prayers  of  their  beloved 
dead."  That  they  did  go  on  doing  so  is 
admitted.  The  evidence  that  they  did  so 
is  conclusive.  Such  prayers  seem  to  Dr. 
Sweete  only  to  express  *'  the  natural  and 
innocent  desire  of  simple  people  to  be  re- 
membered in  the  prayers  of  their  nearest  and 
dearest,  whom  they  believed  to  be  with 
Christ."  ^^  If  I  understand  Dr.  Sweete  he 
means  us  to  infer  that  while  such  desires  are 
innocent  and  natural  they  have  no  reality 
corresponding  to  them.  But  simple  Chris- 
tians at  least  found  enough  comfort  in  them 
to  lead  them  to  continue  so  praying  until 
the  present  day. 

*6Heb.  I2:22ff. 

^"^  I  am  of  course  speaking  in  the  broadest  way 
of  the  whole  Pagan  and  Jewish  situation.  I  do 
not  mean  that  all  the  beliefs  I  am  summing  up  under 
the  caption  Paganism,  were  alike  in  all  times  or 
places.  I  am  simply  speaking  of  a  prevalent  at- 
titude of  Paganism,  and  especially  classical  Pagan- 
ism. 

*^8  Sweete,  p.  231. 


107 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 


XIII 

It  is  necessary  to  be  clear  about  the  prim- 
itive character  of  these  simple  invocations 
of  the  dead  as  there  is  a  tendency  to  confuse 
them  v^ith  the  "  Invocation  of  Saints,"  tech- 
nically so  called,  and  therefore  to  regard  all 
prayers  to  the  dead  as  lacking  in  an  entirely 
primitive  character.  "  The  cult  of  the 
Saints,  we  recall,"  says  Tixeront,  "  was  at 
the  beginning  but  the  cult  of  the  Martyrs, 
comprehending  that  of  the  Apostles.  Those 
alone,  among  the  faithful  of  Christ,  received 
the  homage  of  the  community,  who  had  imi- 
tated their  divine  Master  to  the  death  and 
had  rendered  witness  to  Him  by  the  outpour- 
ing of  their  blood."  ^^  This  is  no  doubt 
quite  true;  but  it  concerns  the  formal  cult  of 
the  Martyrs  at  the  altars  of  the  Church  and 
is  not  to  be  confused  with  the  invocation 
of  the  dead  by  the  faithful.  The  cult  of  the 
Martyrs  came,  and  could  come,  only  when 
persecution  had  given  Martyrs  to  the  Church 
and  the  Church  had  realized  the  value  of  the 
gift.     The  asking  of   the  prayers   of   the 

5»  Tixeront,  p.  62. 

108 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Christian  dead  began  as  soon  as  there  were 
any  Christian  dead.  The  evidence  of  this 
is  in  the  inscriptions  on  their  graves.  Here 
are  a  few  of  them/*^ 

JANUARIA,  BE  THOU  WELL  REFRESHED,  AND 
INTERCEDE    FOR    US. 

MATRONATA  MATRONA,  WHO  LIVED  ONE  YEAR 

AND  FIFTY-TWO  DAYS,   PRAY  FOR  THY 

PARENTS. 

ATTICUS,    SLEEP   IN    PEACE,   SECURE   OF  THY 

SALVATION,    AND   PRAY   EARNESTLY 

FOR   OUR   SINS. 

GENTIAN,  A  CHRISTIAN,  IN  PEACE.  WHO 
LIVED  TWENTY-ONE  YEARS  EIGHT  MONTHS 
AND  SIXTEEN  DAYS.  IN  THY  PRAYERS  IN- 
TERCEDE FOR  US,  FOR  WE  KNOW  THOU  ART 
WITH  CHRIST. 

SABBATIUS,   SWEET   SOUL,   INTERCEDE  AND 

MAKE  PETITION   FOR  THY  BROTHERS 

AND    COMPANIONS. 

60  Barnes,  The  Early  Church  in  the  Light  of  the 
Monuments,  p.  156  ff.  McGinnis,  The  Communion 
of  Saints,  p.  54. 

109 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

ANATOLIUS  TO  HIS  BELOVED  SON  WHO  LIVED 

SEVEN    YEARS,    SEVEN    MONTHS,    AND 

TWENTY  DAYS.       MAY  THY  SPIRIT 

REST  IN  GOD.       PRAY  FOR 

THY    SISTER. 

These  to  me  are  of  very  great  importance, 
not  only  showing  that  for  the  Christian  death 
wrought  no  separation  from  the  dead  in 
Christ,  a  conviction  that  we  need  always  if 
we  are  not  to  lose  hold  on  the  meaning  of 
the  Communion  of  Saints  as  embracing  all 
who  are  in  Christ  and  having  thus  con- 
stantly realized  relations  to  one  another; 
and  we  need  it  if  we  are  to  have  a  proper 
appreciation  of  the  meaning  of  the  cult  of 
the  Martyrs  which  was  so  outstanding  a  fea- 
ture of  the  devotional  life  of  the  Church 
during  the  centuries  of  persecution  and  was 
then  merged  in  the  general  cult  of  the  Saints. 
For  if  from  the  midst  of  a  community 
which  had  no  recognized  intercourse  with 
the  dead,  a  spiritual  hero  was  suddenly  and 
exceptionally  exalted  and  services  were  cele- 
brated in  his  honor  and  multitudes  begged 
for  his  prayers,  we  might  conceivably  see  in 
this  the  influence  of  Paganism,  the  apotheo- 

IIO 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

sis  of  a  hero,  the  recognition  of  a  demigod. 
But  if  all  this  were  exceptional  only  in  de- 
gree, if  it  were  but  a  larger  instance  of  a 
common  and  every  day  happening,  then  it 
will  retain  its  entirely  Christian  character. 
The  simple  Christian,  as  we  have  just  seen, 
asked  the  continued  prayers  of   father  or 
mother,  child  or  friend,  when  they  passed 
to  be  in  a  nearer  sense  with  Christ.     He  felt 
that  so  his  family  was  kept  complete,  that 
death    had    not    wrecked    it.     The    same 
thought  is  plain  in  the  case  of  the  martyr, 
only  now  the  family  is  not  the  group  of  a 
few  individuals  held  together  by  the  sense 
of  a  physical  blood  bond :  the  family  of  the 
martyr  is  the  Church,  and  the  martyr  is  a 
distinguished   son    or   daughter   whom   the 
family  delights  to  honor,  and  whose  inter- 
cession it  feels  will  be  especially  powerful 
because  of  the  way  in  which  he  has  identi- 
fied himself  with  the  life  and  work  of  his 
Master  —  his  passion  is  so  complete  a  re- 
flection of  his  Master's  passion  that  he  seems 
almost  to  identify  himself  with  Him.     So 
at  the  beginning,  M.  Tixeront  tells  us,  "  The 
cult  of  the  Martyrs  was  more  or  less  con- 
founded  with   that   of    the   Saviour.     The 
Martyr  par  excellence  was  Christ  Himself. 
His  imitators  and  witnesses  but  completed 

HI 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

His  passion.  Master  and  disciple  therefore 
were  united  in  the  commemoration  that  was 
made  of  their  death."  ^^  The  service  of  the 
Eucharistic  sacrifice  was  felt  to  be  the  high- 
est mode  of  commemoration  for  them.  The 
sacrifice  was  offered  upon  the  tomb  —  over 
the  body  —  of  the  Martyr.  We  have,  no 
doubt,  an  allusion  to  this  practice  so  early 
as  the  Revelation  of  St.  John.^'^  *'  I  saw 
under  the  altar  the  souls  of  them  that  were 
slain  for  the  Word  of  God,  and  for  the  testi- 
mony which  they  held :  and  they  cried  with 
a  loud  voice,  saying,  How  long,  O  Lord, 
holy  and  true,  dost  Thou  not  judge  and 
avenge  our  blood  on  them  that  dwell  on  the 
earth." 

This  attitude  of  the  Church  toward  the 
Martyrs,  which  subsequently  was  extended 
to  include  all  those  who  gained  recognition 
as  Saints  in  the  technical  sense,  seems  suf- 
ficient to  dispose  of  the  theory  held  by  some 
Anglican  theologians  that  there  are  as  yet 
no  Saints  in  heaven.  That  in  itself,  if  it 
were  true,  would  not  negative  our  right  to 
ask  the  prayers  of  departed  friends.     Inas- 

6^  Tixeront.  p.  70  ff. 
«2  Rev.,  6 :9  ff. 

112 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

much  as  we  can  pray  on  earth,  I  suppose 
that  those  who  have  come  nearer  to  our 
Lord's  reaHzed  presence  in  the  Intermediate 
State  can  pray  too.  Our  asking  for  the 
prayers  of  the  dead  does  not  depend  upon 
where  we  conceive  them  to  be,  but  upon  the 
fact  that  they  are  in  Christ.  But  the  belief 
that  no  human  beings  are  or  will  be  admit- 
ted to  heaven  —  to  the  immediate  presence 
of  God  —  until  after  the  general  resurrec- 
tion is  contradicted  by  the  whole  teaching  of 
the  book  of  Revelation,  by  the  belief  of  the 
Church  in  regard  to  the  Martyrs,  and  of  its 
later  attitude  to  all  whom  it  calls  Saints. 
Such  belief  in  the  exclusion  of  the  Saints 
from  heaven  seems  to  rest,  in  the  first  place, 
on  passages  from  the  earlier  Fathers  which 
were  only  possible  before  the  Church  had 
thought  its  way  to  a  consistent  doctrine  on 
this  point;  and  in  the  second  place,  to  a 
theory  that  the  presence  of  the  Saints  in 
heaven  now  would  make  the  general  judg- 
ment at  the  end  of  the  world  meaningless. 
"  But  to  lay  the  great  stress,  which  so  many 
of  our  Communion  lay,  upon  the  difference 
between  the  present  condition  of  even  the 
greatest  Saints  and  the  glory  of  the  future 

113 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

kingdom  is  surely  as  little  in  accordance  with 
the  Scripture  as  it  is  with  the  general  mind 
of  the  Church."  That  the  Saints  are  now  in 
heaven  does  not  imply  that  there  can  be  no 
increase  in  their  beatitude  after  the  Resur- 
rection. It  no  more  counters  the  teaching 
of  the  general  Judgment  than  belief  in  a 
particular  Judgment  at  death  does. 


XIV 

We  have  reached  the  point  now  where  we 
can  take  up  the  Patristic  testimony  as  the 
Invocation  of  Saints  as  distinguished  from 
the  general  right  of  anybody  to  ask  for  the 
intercessions  of  the  holy  dead  on  his  behalf. 
The  practice  of  the  Invocation  of  Saints 
from  the  age  of  the  Martyrs  on  had  the 
widest  possible  currency  and  affected  the  de- 
votional Hfe  of  the  Church  in  manifold  ways. 
Then,  for  us  Anglicans,  came  the  Reforma- 
tion, and  a  barrier  was  raised  between  us 
and  the  world  beyond.  Prayers  for  the 
Dead  and  Invocation  of  the  Saints  alike 
passed  from  the  devotional  formularies  of 
the   Church, .  The   Communion   of   Saints 

114 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

shriveled  up  and  became  to  all  intents  and 
purposes,  and  still  remains  for  the  average 
Anglican,  a  dead  letter.  Why  and  how  did 
this  happen?  Ought  it  to  have  happened? 
I  am  not  concerned  here  with  prayers  for 
the  Dead;  they,  happily,  have  been  restored 
in  wide  practice  if  not  as  yet  in  the  author- 
ized services  of  the  Churches  of  the  Anglican 
communion.  As  to  the  Invocation  of  Saints, 
I  am  concerned  to  show  that  on  its  own  prin- 
ciples the  Anglican  Church  had  no  right  to 
reject  them,  and  that  the  current  supposition 
that  it  has,  in  fact,  formally  rejected  them 
is  quite  mistaken. 

The  appeal  of  the  Anglican  Church  was 
to  antiquity.  It  did  not  base  its  Reforma- 
tion position  upon  the  Bible  interpreted  by 
private  judgment,  as  did  the  Protestant 
churches;  but  it  based  its  claim  upon  an  ap- 
peal to  the  Holy  Scriptures  as  interpreted  by 
the  Church  of  the  Fathers.  The  claim  of 
the  Churches  of  the  Anglican  Rite  to  be  of 
the  Holy  Catholic  Church  stands  or  falls  by 
that  appeal.  If  that  appeal  fails  us  I  do  not 
see  that  we  have  any  justification  for  our 
separate  position  —  we  should  either  unite 
with  the  Protestants  or  submit  to  Rome. 

115 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

But  clearly  the  Anglican  Church  at  the  Ref- 
ormation had  no  doubt  of  the  soundness  of 
its  position  or  of  the  results  of  its  appeal. 
At  the  risk  of  needless  repetition  let  us 
be  perfectly  clear  as  to  what  this  appeal  is. 
It  is  not  an  appeal  to  Scripture  as  against 
the  Church,  or  as  against  the  current  teach- 
ing of  the  Church  at  that  time.  It  is  not 
an  appeal  to  the  Primitive  Church;  I  have 
already  pointed  out  the  fallacy  of  such  an 
appeal.  It  is  an  appeal  to  the  Church  in 
the  period  of  its  unity  before  East  and 
West  had  been  unhappily  divided,  to  the 
period  of  the  Church  when  its  teaching  had 
all  the  weight  of  a  united  Christendom. 
This,  too,  is  the  period  when  the  Church, 
having  emerged  from  the  era  of  persecu- 
tion, was  free  to  devote  its  energies  to  the 
explicit  statement  of  the  content  of  its  Faith. 
It  had  had  time  to  think  its  way  into,  and 
to  appreciate  in  detail,  the  meaning  and  ap- 
plication of  the  revelation  committed  to  it. 
Moreover,  it  was  compelled  to  make  its  un- 
derstanding of  revelation  clear,  because  after 
the  external  assaults  upon  the  kingdom  of 
God  had  failed  through  its  endurance  of 
hardness   in   the   time   of  persecution,   the 

Ii6 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

forces  of  evil  concentrated  their  energies 
upon  the  corruption  of  the  Faith  that  they 
had  not  been  able  to  overcome  by  force. 
The  appeal  of  the  Anglican  Church  is  an  ap- 
peal to  this  united  Church  of  the  Conciliar 
era,  the  era  of  the  full  statement  of  the  Faith 
against  heretical  attacks,  the  era  when  the 
needs  of  the  Church  for  defenders  called  to 
her  aid  that  wonderful  group  of  men,  un- 
paralleled in  the  later  history  of  the  Church, 
whom  the  Anglican  documents  know  as  the 
old  Catholic  Fathers  and  ancient  Bishops. 

This  then  is  the  appeal.  The  Ten  Arti- 
cles of  1536  declare  that  the  Christian  faith 
is  *'  comprehended  in  the  whole  body  and 
Canon  of  the  Bible,  and  also  in  the  three 
Creeds  " ;  and  that  these  are  to  be  interpreted 
according  to  the  mind  of  '*  holy  and  approved 
Doctors  of  the  Church " ;  and  that  those 
opinions  are  to  be  utterly  refused  and  rejected 
"  which  were  of  long  time  past  condemned 
in  the  four  holy  Councils."  These  state- 
ments are  repeated  in  the  Bishops'  Book  of 
1537  and  in  the  King's  Book  of  1543. 

An  act  of  Parliament  of  1558  declares 
that  "  Nothing  is  to  be  adjudged  heresy  but 
that  which  heretofore  has  been  adjudged  by 

117 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

the  authority  of  the  canonical  Scriptures  or 
the  first  four  General  Councils,  or  some  other 
General  Council."  ^^ 

'  The  Canons  of  1571  direct  Preachers  to 
see  to  it,  **  that  they  never  teach  anything 
in  a  sermon  that  they  intend  to  be  religiously 
held  and  believed  by  the  people,  save  what 
is  agreeable  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Old 
and  New  Testaments,  and  what  the  Catholic 
Fathers  and  ancient  Bishops  have  collected 
from  the  same  doctrine."  ^^ 

That  the  Church  of  England  had  no  in- 
tention of  creating  a  schism  or  departing 
from  the  unity  of  the  Church,  but  intended 
in  all  things  to  adhere  to  the  Apostolic  po- 
sition of  the  Early  Church  appears  from 
Canon  XXX  of  the  Canons  of  1603  which 
reads :  *'  Nay,  so  far  was  it  from  the  pur- 
pose of  the  Church  of  England  to  forsake 
and  reject  the  churches  of  Italy,  France, 
Spain,  Germany,  or  any  such  like  churches, 
in  all  things  which  they  held  and  practiced, 
that  ...  it  doth  with  reverence  retain 
those  ceremonies,  which  do  neither  endamage 
the  Church  of  God,  nor  offend  the  minds  of 

«3  MacColl,  The  Reformation  Settlement,  p.  35. 
**  Cardwell,  Synodalia,  Vol.  I,  p.  126. 

118 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

sober  men ;  and  only  departed  from  them  in 
those  particular  points  wherein  they  were  fal- 
len both  from  themselves  and  their  ancient 
integrity,  and  from  the  Apostolic  churches 
which  were  their  first  founders." 

This  being  the  nature  of  the  appeal  of 
the  Anglican  Church  we  have  to  apply  the 
test  to  the  practice  of  asking  for  the  aid 
of  the  prayers  of  the  Dead,  and,  to  the  prac- 
tice of  invoking  certain  of  the  Dead  who  are 
recognized  as  Saints  in  the  technical  sense. 


XV 


But  before  I  begin  the  citation  of  passages 
from  the  Fathers,  I  again  want  to  make  clear 
what  it  is  I  am  attempting.  I  am  not  at- 
tempting a  collection  of  all  the  passages 
from  the  documents  of  the  Early  Church 
which  have  any  bearing  upon  our  subject. 
There  are  plenty  of  such  collections  in  exist- 
ence, and  any  of  the  longer  books  referred 
to  in  the  book  list  prefixed  to  this  volume 
will  give  an  adequate  catena  of  passages. 
The  inscriptions  upon  Christian  graves,  the 
early  Liturgies,  the  hymns  and  prayers  of  the 

119 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

undivided  Church,  the  writings  of  its  Fa- 
thers and  Doctors,  offer  a  field  from  which 
a  vast  amount  of  material  bearing  upon  the 
subject  of  Invocation  may  be  gathered.  My 
object  requires  no  such  exhaustive  presenta- 
tion of  material.  I  am  solely  concerned 
with  the  demonstration  that  the  Catholic  Fa- 
thers of  the  period  to  which  the  Church  of 
England  appeals  for  the  justification  of  its 
position  held  to  the  practice  of  the  Invoca- 
tion of  the  Dead.  If  their  testimony  is  good 
as  to  other  points  in  the  Christian  religion 
I  see  no  reason  for  rejecting  it  in  this.  If 
they  can  be  quoted  as  authoritative  in  the 
matter  of  the  Deity  of  our  Blessed  Lord 
against  the  Arians,  and  in  the  matter  of  the 
constitution  of  the  Church  against  modern 
Papalists,  and  in  the  matter  of  the  Sacra- 
ments against  Protestants,  I  do  not  see  why 
their  testimony  as  to  the  legitimacy  of  the 
Invocation  of  Saints  should  be  rejected. 
Here  is  the  testimony. 


XVI 


It  may  be  interesting  before  we  proceed 
with  the  extracts  to  look  at  the  summary  of 

1 20 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

3d  and  4th  century  evidence  given  us  by 
Kirsch : 

"  In  the  third  century  v^e  find  all  the  essen- 
tial parts  of  the  Veneration  for  Martyrs  who 
witnessed  to  the  Faith  by  their  death.  The 
Fathers  of  the  Church  and  the  faithful  Laity 
regarded  them  as  the  perfect  followers  of 
the  Lord  and  elect  friends  of  God,  who  at- 
tained at  once  to  a  special  degree  of  glory 
in  heaven.  Thev  were  credited  after  death 
with  the  power  of  protecting  by  their  inter- 
cessions with  God  Christians  both  living  and 
departed,  and  of  obtaining  by  their  recom- 
mendation, while  still  undergoing  sufferings, 
the  reconciliation  of  notorious  sinners,  their 
merits  before  God  being  reckoned  as  com- 
pensation for  the  sinners'  penance.  Their 
protection  was  sought  and  they  were  invoked 
to  intercede  with  God  on  behalf  of  both  the 
Faithful  on  earth  and  the  Faithful  departed. 
Their  memory  was  held  in  honor,  their  tombs 
and  whatever  recalled  their  glorious  death 
were  objects  of  veneration."  ^^ 

It  was  later  that  the  notion  of  sainthood 
was  expanded  to  something  more  like  our 

*^  Kirsch,    The   Doctrine    of   the    Communion    of 
Saints,  pp.  119-20. 

121 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

modern  conception  of  it.  After  the  Martyrs 
the  great  Ascetics  became  the  object  of  invo- 
cation.    Again  hear  Kirsch : 

'*  Along  with  the  Martyrs,  other  members 
of  the  kingdom  of  God  received  special 
honor  as  examples  of  life  for  the  Faithful, 
and  as  protectors  and  intercessors  with  God. 
This  development  was  closely  connected  with 
the  great  outburst  of  asceticism  in  the  4th 
century.  It  was  those  great  teachers  of 
asceticism,  who  by  a  life  of  the  greatest 
self-renunciation  had  gloriously  overcome 
all  attacks  of  the  evil  one,  who,  along  with 
some  of  the  most  celebrated  Bishops,  now 
began  to  be  specially  venerated  with  the  Mar- 
tyrs in  a  marked  manner.  The  numerous 
miracles  related  in  their  biographies  had 
much  to  do  with  exalting  these  Fathers  of 
asceticism  in  the  eyes  of  the  people,  and  ob- 
taining for  them  special  honor."  ^^ 

The  feeling  of  the  unique  glory  of  martyr- 
dom is  found  already  in  the  New  Testament. 
"  If  we  suffer  with  him  we  shall  also  reign 
with  him."  ^'  **  He  that  overcometh,  to 
him  will  I  grant  to  sit  down  in  my  throne."  ®^ 

••^  Kirsch,  p.  154. 
•7  Rom.  1 1 :  28-9. 
«8  Rev.  3 :  14. 

122 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

This  last  passage  is  the  source  of  the  title 
sometimes  given  to  Martyrs,  Sunthronoi, 
those  who  share  the  throne  of  our  Lord. 
But  this  feeling  was  extended,  as  we  have 
just  seen,  to  embrace  others  who  were  reck- 
oned Saints  as  the  era  of  martyrdom  passed. 
The  following  are  the  passages  I  have 
chosen  out  of  a  large  number  available. 

Eusebius  of  Caesaraea  (264-340) 

We  are  instructed  to  say  these  things  in 
prayers,  instead  of  sacrifice  and  whole  burnt 
offerings  putting  forward  the  blood  of  the 
holy  Martyrs  and  sending  up  such  supplica- 
tions as  these :  "  We,  indeed,  have  not  been 
held  worthy  to  strive  unto  death,  nor  to 
empty  out  our  blood  for  God :  but  since  we 
are  the  sons  of  those  who  suffered  these 
things,  glory  in  our  fathers'  virtue,  we  be- 
seech Thee  to  be  compassionated  for  their 
sakes.'* 

St.  Cyril  of  Jerusalem  (315-386) 

Then  we  commemorate  also  those  who 
have  fallen  asleep  before  us,  first  Patriarchs, 
Prophets,  Apostles,  Martyrs,  that  at  their 
prayers  and  intercession  God  would  receive 

123 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

our  petitions.     ( Catech.  Myst.  V.  9  P.  N.  F. 
2d  Series,  Vol.  VII,  p.  154.) 

St.  Gregory  Nazianzus  (325-390) 

Yet  mayest  Thou  gaze  upon  us  from 
above,  Thou  divine  and  sacred  person ;  either 
stay  by  Thy  entreaties  our  thorn  in  the  flesh, 
given  to  us  by  God  for  our  discipHne,  or 
prevail  upon  us  to  bear  it  boldly,  and  guide 
all  our  life  toward  that  which  is  most  for 
our  profit.  And  if  we  be  translated,  do 
Thou  receive  us  there  also  in  thine  own  Tab- 
ernacle, that,  as  we  dwell  together,  and  gaze 
together  more  clearly  and  more  perfectly 
upon  the  Holy  and  Blessed  Trinity,  of  whicH 
we  have  now  in  some  degree  received  the 
image,  our  longing  may  at  last  be  satisfied, 
by  gaining  this  recompense  for  all  the  battles 
we  have  fought  and  the  assaults  we  have  en- 
dured. (Prayer  to  St.  Basil,  Orat.  43.82 
P.  N.  F.     2d  Series  Vol.  VII,  p.  422.) 

St.  Gregory  Nyssa  (335-395) 

May  we,  too,  enter  Paradise,  having  been 
strengthened  through  their  (the  Forty  Mar- 
tyrs) intercession  unto  some  good  confes- 
sion of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  (In  XL 
Mar.) 

124 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

St.  Ambrose  (340-397) 

The  Martyrs  must  be  entreated,  whose 
patronage  we  seem  to  claim  for  ourselves 
by  the  pledge  as  it  were  of  their  bodily  re- 
mains. They  can  entreat  for  our  sins,  who, 
if  they  had  any  sins,  washed  them  in  their 
own  blood;  for  they  are  the  Martyrs  of 
God,  our  leaders,  the  beholders  of  our  life 
and  of  our  actions.  Let  us  not  be  ashamed 
to  take  them  as  our  intercessors  for  our 
weakness,  for  they  themselves  knew  the 
weaknesses  of  the  body,  even  when  they 
overcame.  (De  Viduis  IX.  P.  N.  F.  2d 
Series  Vol.  X,  p.  406.) 

For  what  comfort  have  I  left,  but  that 
I  hope  to  come  quickly  to  Thee,  my  Brother, 
and  that  Thy  departure  will  not  cause  a 
long  severance  between  us,  and  that  it  may 
be  granted  me,  through  Thy  intercessions, 
that  Thou  mayest  quickly  call  me  who  long 
for  Thee.  (Prayer  to  his  Brother.  De 
Fide  Resur.  Carn.  P.  N.  F.  2d  Series  Vol. 
X,  p.  196.) 

St.  Jerome   (340-420) 

And  now,  Paula,  farewell,  and  aid  with 
your  prayers  the  old  age  of  your  votary. 

125 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Your  faith  and  your  works  unite  you  to 
Christ;  thus  standing  in  His  presence  you 
will  the  more  readily  gain  what  you  ask. 
(Ep.   io8  P.  N.  F.  2d  Series  Vol.  VI,  p. 

212.) 

Vigilantius  said,  "  But  once  we  die,  the 
prayer  of  no  person  for  another  can  be 
heard."  St.  Jerome  replied,  *'  If  Apostles 
and  Martyrs  while  still  in  the  body  can  pray 
for  others  when  they  ought  to  be  still  anxious 
for  themselves,  how  much  more  must  they  do 
so  when  they  have  won  their  crowns." 
(Contra  Vigil.  6  P.  N.  F.     2d  Series  Vol. 

VI,  p.  419O 

In  bringing  my  book  to  an  end  I  think  I 
ought  not  to  omit  to  mention  the  devotion 
of  the  holy  woman  Constantia,  who,  when 
a  message  was  brought  her  that  Hilarian's 
body  was  in  Palestine,  immediately  died, 
proving  even  by  death  the  sincerity  of  her 
love  for  the  servant  of  God.  For  she  was 
accustomed  to  spend  whole  nights  in  vigil  at 
his  tomb  and  to  converse  with  him  as  if  he 
were  present  in  order  to  stimulate  her  pray- 
ers.    (Vita  Hilar.  P.  N.  F.     2d  Series  Vol. 

VI,  p.  315.) 

126 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

St.  Chrysostom  (347-407) 

They  have  much  boldness  of  speech,  not 
when  Hving  only,  but  also  having  died,  yea, 
much  more,  having  died.  For  they  now 
bear  the  stigmata,  the  marks  of  Christ;  and, 
displaying  those  stigmata,  they  are  able  to 
persuade  the  King  all  things.  (Hom.  De 
SS.  Bernice  et  Prosdoce.) 

May  it  be  by  the  prayers  of  this  holy 
Martyr  (St.  Pelagia),  and  by  those  of  the 
rest  who  wrestled  with  her,  that  you  may 
retain  accurate  remembrance,  etc. 

St.  Augustine  (354-430) 

It  is  true  that  Christians  pay  religious 
honor  to  the  memory  of  the  Martyrs,  both 
to  excite  us  to  imitate  them,  and  to  obtain 
a  share  in  their  merits,  and  the  assistance  of 
their  prayers.  (Contra  Faustum,  P.  N.  F. 
1st  Series,  Vol.  IV,  p.  262.) 

For  on  these  very  grounds  we  do  not  com- 
memorate them  at  the  Table  in  the  same  way 
as  we  do  others  who  now  rest  in  peace,  as 
that  we  should  also  pray  for  them,  but  rather 
that  they  should  do  so  for  us,  that  we  may 
cleave  to  their  foot-steps.     (On  St.  John, 


127 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

P.  N.  F.  1st  Series,  Vol.  VII,  p.  350.) 
The  names  attached  to  these  quotations 
are,  after  the  Apostles,  second  to  none  in 
dignity  and  authority  in  the  history  of  the 
Church.  They  are  those  of  the  men  who 
led  in  the  battle  waged  for  the  preservation 
of  the  Catholic  Faith  from  the  attacks  of 
heretics.  It  is  to  their  writings  that  the 
Church  in  all  subsequent  times  has  appealed 
with  confidence  for  the  confirmation  of  its 
assertion  that  the  faith  it  was  teaching  was 
the  same  faith  that  had  been  revealed  in  the 
beginning.  These  are  they  whom  the  whole 
Church,  East  and  West,  has  revered  as 
Saints  and  Doctors,  and  whose  names  are 
enrolled  in  all  calendars  for  yearly  commem- 
oration. In  particular,  these  are  they  to 
whom  the  Anglican  Church  at  the  Reforma- 
tion made  appeal.  Can  we  for  a  moment 
consent  to  treat  seriously  the  assertion  that 
they  had  so  far  departed  from  the  Faith 
committed  to  them  as  to  bring  back  to  the 
Church  the  heathenism  it  had  abandoned, 
and  had  corrupted  the  pure  religion  of  Christ 
by  the  introduction  of  shameless  idolatry? 
Far  be  it  from  us  to  think  so. 


128 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 


XVII 

This  state  of  things  continued  until  the 
Reformation.  All  through  the  Middle  Ages 
there  was  the  constant  exercise  of  the  Com- 
munion of  Saints  through  the  tides  of  mu- 
tual intercession  which  flowed  from  all  parts 
of  the  Church  to  its  common  center  and  back 
again.  Prayers  and  Masses  for  the  Dead 
were  a  notable  expression  of  the  confidence 
of  the  Faithful  that  those  who  had  passed 
beyond  their  sight  had  not  passed  out  of 
union  with  Christ  and  therefore  had  not 
passed  beyond  the  reach  of  prayers.  The 
Invocation  of  Saints  expressed  the  unshaken 
confidence  of  the  Faithful  in  the  continued 
love  and  interest  in  the  Body  of  Christ  and 
each  member  of  it  felt  by  those  who  had 
passed  to  a  clearer  vision  of  God.  There 
were  no  doubt  gross  abuses.  That  was  in- 
evitable under  the  circumstances  of  the  low 
cultural  level  of  the  time.  There  were  er- 
rors and  exaggeration  of  teaching  on  the 
part  of  some  of  the  clergy  and  wandering 
preachers;  this  also  was  inevitable  as  both 
clergy  and  preaching  friars  were  drawn  from 

129 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

the  mass  of  the  people  and  could  hardly  have 
attained  any  very  advanced  instruction.  But 
it  cannot  be  said  that  the  theology  of  the 
Church  went  much  astray  in  these  matters. 
The  great  mediaeval  theologians  still  re- 
main our  theological  masters;  but  the  mass 
of  the  clergy  will  never  in  any  age  be  very 
far  in  advance  of  the  mass  of  the  people  from 
which  they  are  drawn.  Their  mentality  will 
be  that  of  the  people,  and  they  will  share  the 
prejudices  and  intellectual  limitations  and 
general  social  outlook  of  their  congregations, 
rather  than  the  point  of  view  of  their  theo- 
logical masters.  The  important  thing  was 
not  that  there  were  abuses  of  practice  both 
in  the  matter  of  prayers  for  the  Dead  and 
the  Invocation  of  Saints;  but  how,  as  the 
fact  of  their  existence  became  clear  through 
the  rise  in  the  intellectual  level  of  the  edu- 
cated class,  they  were  going  to  be  dealt  with. 
Reform  was  quite  possible,  but  it  would 
require  a  good  deal  of  patience  to  carry  out 
reforms  in  matter  that  touched  the  every- 
day devotional  life  of  the  people  so  closely. 
And  patience  was  one  of  the  virtues  that 
was  lacking.  The  Renaissance  was  virtu- 
ally a  Pagan  reaction  against  the  authority 

130 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

of  the  Church.  It  produced  a  very  super- 
ficial culture  based  on  a  wholly  mistaken 
notion  of  antiquity,  and  raised  up  a  class 
of  scholars  who  substituted  an  ideal  of  cul- 
ture for  the  Church's  ideal  of  holiness.  Men 
were  to  be  saved,  if  indeed  it  were  at  all 
necessary  to  be  saved,  by  knowledge  and 
not  by  faith.  There  were  many  profound 
and  humble  scholars  born  of  the  Ranais- 
sance ;  but  the  immediate  effect  of  the  move- 
ment as  a  whole  was  the  effect  of  all  one- 
sided cultural  development,  to  produce  a  set 
of  men  —  and  those  especially  who  did  the 
writing  and  popularizing  —  w^ho  were  char- 
acterized by  a  contempt  of  the  immediate 
past  and  by  extreme  arrogance  in  dealing 
with  all  such  questions  as  the  reform  of 
Church  discipline  and  practice.  When  the 
tide  of  the  Renaissance  had  passed  beyond 
the  borders  of  Italy,  where  familiarity  had 
already  bred  contempt  with  a  good  deal  in 
the  administration  of  the  Church  and  where 
zeal  for  reform  was  never  great,  into  Ger- 
many and  France  and  England,  a  portion  of 
its  energy  was  speedily  converted  from  a 
purely  secular  culture  scorning  things  spirit- 
ual and  devoted  itself  to  the  purification  of 

131 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

the  Church.  The  Reformation  was  the  child 
of  the  age-long  restlessness  of  the  great  body 
of  the  Church  under  the  abuses  of  the  Papal 
over-lordship  —  a  restlessness  which  had 
long  been  shaking  the  Church  in  the  attempts 
of  the  Reforming  Councils  to  bring  about 
a  better  state  of  things  —  and  the  new  cul- 
tural movement  which  was  judging  all  things 
by  the  standards  of  classical  Paganism  as 
it  understood,  or  rather  misunderstood,  it, 
and  contemptuously  rejecting  much  of  medi- 
aeval religion  as  being  barbarism  and  super- 
stition. 

The  forces  of  the  Renaissance  touched 
England  at  the  end  of  the  Fourteenth  and 
opening  of  the  Fifteenth  centuries  but 
lightly,  with  much  of  its  Paganism  left  be- 
hind. Educational  reform  came  to  the  front 
and  a  small  but  remarkable  group  of  men 
were  interesting  themselves  in  the  improve- 
ment of  educational  discipline  and  practice. 
But  this  promising  movement  was  soon 
swamped  by  the  results  of  the  quarrel  be- 
tween Henry  VIII  and  the  Papacy ;  and  for 
a  time  the  whole  intellectual  and  spiritual 
energies  of  the  nation  were  swept  into  the 
turmoil  that  arose.     The  outcome  was  the 

132 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

constitutional  reform  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land and  its  freedom  from  the  yoke  that 
the  Papacy  had  been  trying  with  more  or 
less  success  throughout  the  Middle  Ages  to 
impose  upon  it.  It  was  some  time  before  the 
Protestant  influence  from  the  Continent 
gained  sufficient  headway  in  England  to 
bring  about  a  formidable  movement  for  or- 
ganic and  doctrinal  change.  But  from  the 
meeting  of  the  Reform  Parliament  in  1529 
there  was  a  constant  restlessness  which  was 
evidenced  by  the  putting  forth  of  a  series  of 
doctrinal  formularies  in  the  vain  hope  of 
quieting  agitation  and  securing  unity  and 
peace.  We  are  concerned  with  these  formu- 
laries only  in  so  far  as  they  bear  upon  the 
subject  of  Prayer  to  the  Dead. 


XVIII 

On  the  nth  of  July,  1536,  there  was 
signed  by  the  rnembers  of  the  Convocation 
of  the  clergy  of  England  the  first  authorized 
formulary  of  faith  of  the  reformed  Church 
of  England.  It  was  entitled  "  Articles  to 
Established  Christian  Quietness,"  and  came 

^33 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

to  be  known  as  the  Ten  Articles.  Accord- 
ing to  Canon  Dixon  ^'^  the  Articles  were  in- 
tended to  vindicate  the  Catholic  position  of 
the  Church  of  England,  and  as  a  warning 
to  those  who  wished  to  push  the  reforma- 
tion beyond  Catholic  limits.  The  section  en- 
titled, '*  Of  Praying  to  the  Saints  "  is  as 
follows ; 

"  As  touching  praying  to  the  Saints,  we 
will  that  all  Bishops  and  Preachers  shall 
instruct  and  teach  our  people  committed  by 
us  unto  their  spiritual  charge,  that  albeit 
grace,  remission  of  sin,  and  salvation,  cannot 
be  obtained  but  of  God  only  by  the  mediation 
of  our  Saviour  Christ  which  is  the  only  suf- 
ficient Mediator  for  our  sins;  yet  it  is  very 
laudable  to  pray  to  Saints  in  heaven  ever- 
lastingly living,  whose  charity  is  ever  per- 
manent, to  be  intercessors,  and  to  pray  for 
us  and  with  us  unto  the  Father,  that  for  His 
dear  Son  Jesus  Christ's  sake,  we  may  have 
grace  of  Him  and  remission  of  our  sins,  with 
an  earnest  purpose  (not  wanting  ghostly 
strength),  to  observe  and  keep  His  holy 
commandments,  and  never  to  decline  from 
the  same  again  unto  our  life's  end:  and  in 

6»  Dixon,  Vol.  I,  p.  409. 

134 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

this  manner  we  may  pray  to  our  Blessed 
Lady,  to  Saint  John  Baptist,  and  to  all  and 
every  of  the  Apostles  or  any  other  Saint 
particularly,  as  our  devotion  doth  serve  us; 
so  that  it  be  done  without  any  vain  super- 
stition, as  to  think  that  any  Saint  is  more 
merciful,  or  will  hear  us  sooner  than  Christ, 
or  that  any  Saint  doth  serve  for  one  thing 
more  than  another,  or  is  patron  of  the 
same."  '^^ 

This  is  a  perfectly  clear  and  definite  set- 
ting forth  of  the  traditional  theology  of 
the  Church  such  as  it  will  be  found  in  the 
pages  of  any  of  the  accredited  theologians 
of  the  Middle  Ages.  But  the  Confession  of 
Faith  of  which  this  was  a  part  did  not  have 
the  quieting  effect  desired  and  a  new  com- 
mission was  appointed  and  sat  in  the  fol- 
lowing year,  1537,  for  the  purpose  of  draw- 
ing up  a  new  Confession  of  Faith.  It  con- 
sisted of  the  Bishops  of  both  Provinces  and 
certain  other  divines  called  together  by  the 
King's  Writ.  The  result  of  their  delibera- 
tions, which  is  entitled  "  The  Institution  of 
a  Christian  Man,"  and  was  popularly  known 
as  The  Bishops'  Book,  was  published  with 
^0  Formularies  of  Faith,  etc.,  p.  XXXIX. 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

the  signatures  of  the  two  Archbishops,  of  all 
the  diocesan  Bishops,  and  of  twenty-five 
Doctors,  who  declared  that  they  wrote  in  the 
name  of  *'  All  other  Bishops,  Prelates,  and 
Archdeacons  of  the  Realm."  The  book 
never  had  the  authority  of  Convocation. 
In  the  instruction  on  the  Third  Command- 
ment we  read: 

"  We  think  it  convenient,  that  all  Bishops 
and  Preachers  shall  instruct  and  teach  the 
people  committed  unto  their  spiritual  charge, 
that  (forasmuch  as  the  gifts  of  health  of 
body,  health  of  soul,  forgiveness  of  sins, 
the  gift  of  grace,  for  life  everlasting,  and 
such  other,  be  the  gifts  of  God,  and  cannot 
be  given  but  by  God)  whosoever  maketh  in- 
vocation to  Saints  for  these  gifts,  praying 
to  them  for  any  of  the  said  gifts,  of  such 
like,  (which  cannot  be  given  but  by  God 
only)  yieldeth  the  glory  of  God  to  His  crea- 
ture, contrary  to  this  Commandment.  For 
God  saith  by  His  prophet,  I  will  not  yield  my 
glory  to  any  other.  Therefore  they  that  so 
pray  to  Saints  for  these  gifts,  as  though 
they  could  give  them,  or  be  given  of  them, 
transgress  this  Commandment,  yielding  to 
the  creature  the  honor  of  God.     Neverthe- 

136 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

less,  to  pray  to  the  Saints  to  be  intercessors 
with  us  and  for  us  to  our  Lord  for  our  suits 
which  we  make  unto  Him,  and  for  such 
things  as  we  can  obtain  of  none  but  Him, 
so  that  we  make  no  invocation  of  them,  is 
lawful,  and  allowed  by  the  Catholic 
Church."  ^1 

In  this  Article,  while  the  legitimacy  of 
asking  for  the  prayers  of  the  Saints  is  up- 
held, we  seem  to  feel  back  of  its  wording  a 
good  deal  of  pressure  being  brought  to  bear 
upon  its  authors  and  an  evident  shading 
down  in  language  to  reach  a  compromise 
with  objectors.  The  explanation  in  detail 
of  what  had  been  already  sufficiently  ex- 
plained shows  a  certain  uneasiness ;  and  they 
make  a  curious  distinction  between  invo- 
cation and  intercession  which  seems  to  have 
become  permanent  in  the  English  theology 
of  the  following  century  and  to  which  we 
shall  have  to  recur  later.  What  needs  to  be 
noted  now  is  that,  under  strong  pressure, 
they  still  held  fast  to  Catholic  doctrine. 

Six  years  later,  however,  the  question  was 
reopened  by  the  report  of  a  Commission 
which  had  been  appointed  three  years  earlier 

"^^  Formularies,  etc.,  p.  141. 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

and  consisted  of  the  Archbishops  of  Canter- 
bury and  York,  six  Bishops,  and  twelve  Doc- 
tors. This  document  of  1543  which  is  the 
third  Confession  of  Faith  put  forth  in  the 
reign  of  Henry  VHI  is  entitled,  The  Neces- 
sary Doctrine  and  Erudition  of  a  Christian 
Man,  and  w^as  known  as  the  King's  Book. 
It  was  introduced  into  Convocation  and  after 
an  examination  lasting  eight  days  was 
passed.  It  has  therefore  the  authority  of 
the  English  Church.'^^  In  the  comment  of 
the  Third  Commandment  we  read: 

"  Therefore  they  that  so  pray  to  the 
Saints  for  these  gifts  (of  health,  grace,  etc.) 
as  though  they  could  give  them,  or  be  givers 
of  them,  transgress  this  Commandment; 
yielding  to  a  creature  the  honor  of  God. 
Nevertheless,  to  pray  unto  the  Saints  to  be 
intercessors  with  us  and  for  us  to  our  Lord 
in  our  suits  which  we  make  unto  Him,  and 
for  such  things  as  we  can  obtain  of  none 
but  Him,  so  that  we  esteem  not  or  worship 
not  them  as  givers  of  those  gifts,  but  as 
intercessors  for  the  same,  is  lawful,  and  al- 
lowed by  the  Catholic  Church:  and  if  we 
honor  them  in  other  ways  than  as  friends  of 

72  Dixon,  Vol.  II,  p.  314. 

138 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

God,  dwelling  with  Him,  and  established 
now  in  His  glory  everlasting,  and  as  exam- 
ples which  were  requisite  for  us  to  follow 
in  holy  life  and  conversation;  or  if  we  yield 
unto  the  Saints  the  adoration  and  honor 
which  is  due  to  God  alone,  we  do  (no 
doubt)  break  His  Commandments."  "^^ 

This  reconsideration  of  the  position  of  the 
Church  of  England  continues  firmly  to  hold 
to  Catholic  doctrine.  There  is  no  recession 
from  the  position  of  1537.  We  note  how- 
ever that  "  Invocation  "  is  dropped,  and  the 
word  recommended  in  the  preceding  docu- 
ment, "  Intercession,''  is  adhered  to. 

In  the  following  year,  1544,  the  English 
Litany  as  prepared  by  Archbishop  Cranmer 
was  put  forth.  It  was  modeled  upon  the 
mediaeval  Litanies,  but  the  elaborate  invoca- 
tion of  individual  Saints  familiar  in  them 
was  dropped.  It  included  however  the  fol- 
lowing petitions : 

St.  Mary,  Mother  of  God,  our  Saviour 
Jesus  Christ,  Pray  for  us. 

All  Holy  Angels  and  Archangels,  and 
all  Holy  Orders  of  Blessed  Spirits,  Pray  for 
us. 

73  Formularies,  etc.,  p.  305. 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

All  Holy  Patriarchs,  and  Prophets,  Apos- 
tles, Martyrs,  Confessors,  and  Virgins,  and 
all  the  Blessed  Company  of  Heaven,  Pray 
for  usJ"* 

Beginning  with  the  reign  of  Edward  VI 
there  were  three  sets  of  Articles  of  ReHgion 
put  forth.  The  XLH  Articles  were  issued 
in  1553  but  a  few  weeks  before  the  death 
of  the  king,  and  in  the  opinion  of  Dr.  Kidd  '^^ 
never  had  Synodical  authority  but  simply  the 
authorization  of  the  Crown.  That  how- 
ever is  not  important  as  with  the  accession 
of  Mary  they  fell  out  of  sight.  After  the 
accession  of  Elizabeth  they  were  made  the 
basis  of  a  set  of  Articles  put  forth  in  1563 
with  the  authority  of  Convocation.  As 
adopted  by  Convocation  these  were  thirty- 
nine  in  number,  but  as  published  they  were 
but  thirty-eight  —  one  having  been  sup- 
pressed by  the  Crown.  They  underwent  a 
further  revision  in  1571  when  the  discarded 
Article  was  restored  and  became  the  Thirty- 
ninth  of  our  present  Articles. 

The  Twenty-second  Article  as  it  stands 

7*  Proctor  and  Freere,  On  the  Book  of  Common 
Prayer,  p.  415. 

75  Kidd,  On  the  Thirty-nine  Articles.    Vol.  I,  p. 
27  ff. 

140 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

to-day  declares  the  ''  Romish  Doctrine " 
(Doctrina  Romanensium,  in  the  Latin  ver- 
sion) ''  concerning  .  .  .  Invocation  of 
Saints,  a  fond  thing  vainly  invented,  and 
grounded  upon  no  warranty  of  Scripture; 
but  rather  repugnant  to  the  Word  of  God." 
It  v^as  in  this  form  in  the  revision  of  1563, 
but  in  that  revision  the  phrase  "  Romish  doc- 
trine '*  was  substituted  for  the  phrase  of 
the  earlier  version  of  1553,  "The  doctrine 
of  the  School  Authors."  According  to 
Kidd  the  effect  of  the  change  was  "  to  di- 
rect the  condemnation  against  a  type  of  prac- 
tice and  teaching  current  within  recent  mem- 
ory rather  than  against  the  system  of  the 
Schoolmen  whose  day  was  passed.  The 
party  with  which  this  teaching  was  current 
was  known  as  the  *  Romanensian '  or  *  Rom- 
ish '  party,  a  name  given  to  the  extreme  Me- 
di?evalists  and  not  discriptive  of  the  Roman 
Church  as  a  whole."  This  is  much  as  we 
use  the  word  ultramontane  to-day. 

The  Thirty-nine  Articles  were  subscribed 
by  the  Upper  House  of  Convocation  on  the 
29th  of  January,  1563;  and  by  the  Lower 
House  on  the  23d  of  February,  1563.  The 
decree  of  the  Council  of  Trent  on  the  subject 

141 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

of  the  Invocation  of  Saints  was  not  published 
till  December,  1563.  This  would  seem  to 
be  a  sufficient  answer  to  the  allegation  that 
the  Convocation  had  the  formal  doctrine  of 
the  Roman  Church  in  mind  in  changing  the 
wording  of  the  ArticleJ^ 

Whatever  the  framers  of  Article  XXII 
may  have  had  in  mind  it  is  quite  impossible 
to  construe  that  Article  as  a  condemnation 
of  the  practice  of  the  Invocation  of  Saints. 
When  one  condemns  a  special  theor}^  con- 
cerning anything  one  can  hardly  be  held  to 
condemn  the  original  that  the  theory  inter- 
prets or  any  other  interpretive  theory ;  rather, 
the  fact  of  the  condemnation  of  one  inter- 
pretation may  usually  be  held  to  be  the  vin- 
dication of  some  other.  If  a  congress  of 
scientists  were  to  meet  and  condemn  '*  the 
Darwinian  theory  concerning  evolution  as 
a  fond  thing  vainly  invented,  and  grounded 
in  no  warranty  of  observed  fact;  but  rather 

76  Bp.  John  Wordsworth  has  contended  that  the 
reference  of  the  Article  was  to  the  Trentinc  decree 
of  17  Sept.,  1562,  "Of  Masses  in  honor  of  the 
Saints."  But  as  it  seems  to  me  impossible  to  con- 
strue this  decree  as  having  any  bearing  on  the 
subject  I  do  not  think  it  worth  while  to  go  into 
the  matter.     See  Stone,  p.  41  ff. 

142 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

repugnant  to  the  whole  body  of  scientific 
knowledge  ";  it  is  quite  possible  that  a  news- 
paper might  come  out  with  a  scare  headline 
— "  Doctrine  of  Evolution  Condemned  by 
Scientists " ;  but  the  announcement  would 
only  produce  a  smile  in  educated  circles 
where  no  one  would  dream  that  Evolution 
and  the  Darwinian  theory  concerning  it  were 
the  same  thing.  If  the  framers  of  Article 
XXII  had  wished  to  condemn  the  practice 
of  Invocation  of  Saints,  the  resources  of  the 
English  language  are  quite  sufficient  to  have 
enabled  them  to  say  so  plainly :  the  fact  that 
they  said  something  quite  different  proves 
that  they  did  not  intend  to  condemn  the  prac- 
tice in  all  its  forms. 

A  clue  to  their  intention  is,  perhaps,  to  be 
found  in  a  distinction  we  have  already  met 
between  Invocation  and  Intercession.  I 
pointed  out  that  in  The  Insiitution  of  a 
Christian  Man,  of  1537,  this  distinction  was 
made,  and  was  held  to  in  the  King's  Book, 
of  1543.  There  are  indications  that  this  dis- 
tinction had  considerable  vogue,  as  it  has 
been  pointed  out  that  a  like  distinction  be- 
tween lawful  prayers  to  the  Saints  and  In- 
vocation or  praying  to  the  Saints  as  though 

143 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

they  could  themselves  give  what  we  desire, 
is  found  in  the  following  century  in  the 
writings  of  Archbishop  Ussher  and  of 
Bishop  P^orbes  of  Edinburgh.  This  estab- 
lishes a  probability  that  the  word  invocation 
in  Article  XXII  may  have  the  same  signifi- 
cation. 

So  far  as  the  formularies  of  the  English 
Church  are  concerned,  it  would  appear  from 
this  review  that  there  is  visible  no  intention 
of  condemning  the  practice  of  the  Invocation 
of  Saints;  but  there  is  evidently  an  anxiety 
to  have  the  doctrine  so  stated  that  there  can 
be  no  mistake  as  to  its  scope  —  so  to  state  it 
that  it  can  under  no  circumstances  be  imag- 
ined to  encroach  upon  the  mediatorial  oflice 
of  Our  Lord  or  upon  the  prerogatives  of 
God.  This  is  what  we  should  expect  from 
a  Church  trying  to  pick  its  way  through  dif- 
ficult and  embarrassing  controversies  and 
anxious  to  vindicate  its  Catholic  character 
by  an  appeal  to  the  teaching  and  practice  of 
the  Church  in  the  era  of  the  great  Catholic 
Doctors. 


144 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 


XIX 

Yet  the  fact  is  that  the  practice  of  the 
Invocation  of  Saints,  and  the  broader  prac- 
tice of  asking  for  the  Prayers  of  the  Dead 
whether  Saints  or  not,  passed  out  of  the  Hfe 
of  the  EngHsh  Church  and  consequently  of 
the  churches  descended  from  it,  and  is  to-day 
by  the  bulk  of  their  membership  either  re- 
jected outright  or  regarded  with  great  dis- 
trust and  suspicion.  This  seems  a  strange 
conclusion  from  the  series  of  facts  cited  in 
this  essay.     How  are  we  to  explain  it? 

Perhaps  a  sufficient  explanation  of  the 
decline  and  disappearance  of  this  practice 
is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  all  invocations 
were  expunged  from  the  public  services  of 
the  Church.  Under  such  circumstances 
those  who  had  been  accustomed  to  ask  the 
Prayers  of  the  Dead  in  their  private  devotion 
might  go  on  doing  so ;  but  in  the  next  gener- 
ation or  so  the  practice  would  die  out.  And 
this  the  more  quickly  if  it  were  actively 
discouraged  by  those  in  authority.  The 
Church  through  its  official  utterances  no 
doubt  expressed  its  mind,  that  in  view  of  the 

145 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

abuses  that  had  been  prevalent  in  the  past 
and  of  the  offense  they  gave,  it  would  be 
better  that  public  practice  of  Invocation 
should  cease,  though  at  the  same  time  ex- 
pressing no  condemnation  of  the  practice, 
it  was  not  possible  to  impose  a  like  note  of 
silence  upon  the  ministry  of  the  Church,  and 
especially  upon  the  Bishops.  Indeed,  owing 
to  the  peculiar  see-saw  movement  of  the  Ref- 
ormation by  which  one  party  was  now  in 
control  and  now  another,  the  practice  of  In- 
vocation got  a  semi-official  condemnation  in 
the  Book  of  Homilies.  Bishops  charged 
against  it,  and  preachers  preached  against  it. 
The  influence  of  Continental  Protestantism 
was  all  on  the  side  of  discouraging  devo- 
tional expression,  so  that  it  is  not  surprising 
that  the  thought  of  souls  as  having  any  rela- 
tion to  this  present  life  passed  away.  The 
attempt  to  struggle  back  to  the  devotional 
standards  required  by  or  implied  in  the  Book 
of  Common  Prayer  and  the  formal  utter- 
ances of  the  Church,  which  characterized 
the  opening  of  the  17th  century  ended  in 
the  suppression  of  the  Church  organization 
at  the  hands  of  the  Protestant  revolutionists; 
and,  after  an  attempt  at  revival  under  the 

146 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

later  Stuarts,  was  crushed  by  the  Protestant 
ascendency  which  gave  us  the  spiritual  dead- 
ness  of  the  i8th  century.  The  leaders  of  the 
Oxford  Movement  in  the  19th  century  were 
somewhat  wary  of  touching  so  highly  con- 
troversial a  doctrine.  Late  years  have  seen 
more  boldness  and  a  better  appreciation  of 
all  that  is  involved  in  our  daily  professed 
belief  in  the  Communion  of  Saints.  Clergy 
and  people  alike  have  been  slow  in  freeing 
themselves  from  the  horrors  of  Protestant 
eschatology;  but  the  task  is  now  largely  ac- 
complished and  the  future  looks  bright. 


XX 


The  teaching  of  the  ancient  Church  which 
has  been  quoted  was  that  of  both  East  and 
West.  As  our  concern  in  producing  it  was 
to  illustrate  the  meaning  of  the  appeal  of 
the  Church  of  England  to  antiquity  we  had 
no  need  to  quote  Mediaeval  or  modern  West- 
ern practice.  Nor  is  there  such  need  for 
quoting  the  belief  and  practice  of  the  mod- 
ern Orthodox  Churches.     But  from  another 

147 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

point  of  view  some  description  of  the  use 
and  practice  of  the  Orthodox  seems  desir- 
able. Movements  toward  Church  Unity  so 
far  as  they  contain  any  element  of  hope,  are 
movements  toward  the  ultimate  reconcilia- 
tion of  the  Churches  of  the  Catholic  tradi- 
tion, and  not  toward  a  Pan-Protestant  com- 
bination. Anglican  and  Orthodox  have 
been  so  separated  geographically  and  politi- 
cally that  any  rapprochement  in  the  past  has 
been  almost  hopeless.  But  we  are  entering 
a  new  world  religiously  as  well  as  otherwise, 
and  in  it  our  opportunities  of  contact  with 
the  Orthodox  will  be  much  fuller  than  in  the 
past,  and  much  less  hampered  by  inherited 
prejudices.  Moreover,  attempts  at  an  un- 
derstanding and  at  inter-communion  with  the 
Orthodox  will  not  be  blocked  by  any  such 
obstacles  as  lie  across  the  way  of  approach 
to  Rome.  It  would  seem  that  the  Oriental 
Churches  and  those  of  the  Anglican  Rite 
have  but  to  understand  each  other  to  find  a 
ground  of  agreement;  and  one  of  the  things 
that  it  is  necessary  for  us  on  our  part  to  ap- 
preciate is  the  Orthodox  understanding  of 
the  Communion  of  Saints.  That  shall  be 
my  excuse  for  a  rather  fuller  citation  of 

148 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Eastern  documents  than  is  at  all  necessary 
for  the  main  purpose  of  my  essay. 

The  difference  between  the  Latin  and  the 
Orthodox  eschatology  is  in  reality  the  dif- 
ference between  the  Latin  and  the  Orthodox 
mind  —  the  former  clear  cut,  eager  for 
sharp  definition,  not  satisfied  till  every  detail 
of  doctrine  and  practice  is  fixed  with  pre- 
cision; the  latter,  impressionistic,  vague, 
mystic,  satisfied  with  general  statements  and 
not  eager  about  detail  and  consistent  defini- 
tion. There  is  a  characteristic  instance  of 
this  difference  in  the  summing  up  of  the 
state  of  the  Departed  in  the  Orthodox  Con- 
fession : 

The  Orthodox  Confession  of  Peter 
Mogila  says  that  "  Those  souls  of  men  who 
depart  hence  in  the  favor  of  God,  and  have 
wiped  out  their  sins  by  repentance,"  are  in 
a  place  variously  named  Paradise,  Abraham's 
Bosom,  and  the  kingdom  of  heaven.  "  By 
whichsoever  of  these  three  names  that  w^e 
have  mentioned  any  one  shall  call  the  recep- 
tacle of  the  righteous  souls,  he  will  not  err; 
provided  that  he  believes  and  understands 
this  much,  that  they  enjoy  the  favor  of  God, 
and  are  in  His  heavenly  kingdom,  and,  as  the 

149 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

hymns  of  the  Church  mention,  in  heaven/' 
And  again :  *'  This,  then,  is  to  be  beHeved 
by  the  Faithful,  that  as  the  souls  of  the 
righteous,  although  received  into  heaven,  do 
not  receive  the  full  and  perfect  crown  of 
glory  before  the  last  Judgment,  so  neither 
do  the  souls  of  the  damned  feel  and  suffer 
the  full  measure  and  weight  of  their  punish- 
ments before  that  time.  But  after  the  final 
and  decisive  Judgment  the  souls  of  all,  re- 
joined to  their  bodies,  will  be  crowned  with 
glory  or  overwhelmed  with  torments."  ^"^ 

The  formal  doctrine  of  the  Orthodox  with 
regard  to  the  Invocation  of  Saints  may  be 
gathered  from  the  following  extracts : 

"  The  Faithful  who  belong  to  the  Church 
Militant  on  Earth,  in  offering  their  prayers 
to  God,  call  at  the  same  time  to  their  aid  the 
Saints  who  belong  to  the  Church  in  heaven ; 
and  these,  standing  on  the  highest  steps  of 
approach  to  God,  by  their  prayers  and  inter- 
cessions purify,  strengthen,  and  offer  before 
God  the  prayers  of  the  Faithful  living  upon 
earth,  and  by  the  will  of  God  work  graciously 
and  beneficently  upon  them,  either  by  in- 

'''^  The    Orthodox    Confession    of    Peter    Mogila. 
Pp.  S6-7. 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

visible  virtue,  or  by  distinct  apparitions,  and 
in  divers  other  ways."  "^^ 

And  a  little  further  on: 

"  Q.  In  what  state  are  the  souls  of  the 
Dead  till  the  general  resurrection? 

"  A.  The  souls  of  the  righteous  are  in 
light  and  rest,  with  a  foretaste  of  eternal 
happiness;  and  the  souls  of  the  wicked  are 
in  a  state  the  reverse  of  this."  '^^ 

The  Synod  of  Jerusalem  says  in  its  Eighth 
Decree :  "  We  believe  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  to  be  the  only  Mediator,  and  that  in 
giving  Himself  a  ransom  for  all  He  hath 
through  His  own  Blood  made  a  reconcilia- 
tion between  God  and  man,  and  that  Him- 
self having  a  care  for  His  own  is  advocate 
and  propitiation  for  our  sins.  Albeit,  in 
prayers  and  supplications  to  Him,  we  say 
the  Saints  are  intercessors,  and  above  all,  the 
undefiled  Mother  of  God  the  Word;  the  holy 
Angels  too  —  whom  we  know  to  be  set  over 
us  —  the  Apostles,  Prophets,  Martyrs,  Pure 
Ones,  and  all  whom  He  hath  glorified  as 
having    served    Him    faithfully.  .  .  .  And 

^*  The  Longer  Catechism  of  the  Russian  Church. 
Blackmore,  p.  78. 
T»  Ibid.  p.  98. 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

not  only  are  the  Saints  while  on  their  pil- 
grimage regarded  as  mediators  and  inter- 
cessors for  us  with  God,  but  especially  after 
their  death,  when  all  reflective  vision  being 
done  away,  they  behold  clearly  the  Holy 
Trinity."  ^"^ 

In  the  work  On  the  Duty  of  Parish  Priests 
it  is  said  that  "  To  desire  and  ask  the  aid  and 
help,  Prayers,  that  is,  of  the  Saints,  the 
Servants  and  Friends  of  God,  who  now  reign 
with  Christ  their  Lord,  is  a  righteous  and 
holy  thing,  that  they  too  may  join  with  us 
and  for  us  in  offering  prayers  to  God  for  the 
forgiveness  of  sins.  And  when  we  repent 
and  amend  our  lives,  and  receive  pardon 
and  mercy  from  the  Lord,  we  may  be  sure 
that  they  too  joy  over  us,  as  well  as  the 
Angels  that  are  in  heaven ;  as  the  Lord  hath 
said."  81 

In  the  Greek  Manuals  of  Church  Doctrine 
(p.  56)  it  is  said,  "  Prayer  is  directed  prop- 
erly to  God,  but  even  though  we  also  pray  to 
the  Saints,  we  do  this,  not  because  w^e  look 
upon  them  as  a  sort  of  God  able  of  them- 
selves to  help  us  —  far  from  us  be  such 

80  Robertson,  p.  120. 

81  Blackmore,  p.  261. 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

blasphemy !  —  but  because  we  believe,  as 
Friends  of  God  by  reason  of  their  sanctity 
and  moral  purity,  they  intercede  with  Him 
on  our  behalf,  even  as  we  who  are  still  in  the 
land  of  the  living  pray  for  one  another,  and 
ask  for  one  another's  supplications." 

Naturally  the  Liturgies  are  full  of  Invoca- 
tion. Here  is  a  characteristic  passage  from 
the  Anaphora  or  Canon  of  the  Mass  of  the 
Liturgy  of  St.  John  Chrysostom : 

*'  Moreover  we  offer  unto  Thee  this  rea- 
sonable service  on  behalf  of  those  departed 
in  the  Faith,  our  Ancestors,  Fathers,  Patri- 
archs, Prophets,  Apostles,  Preachers,  Evan- 
gelists, Martyrs,  Confessors,  Virgins,  and 
every  just  soul  made  perfect  in  the  Faith, 
especially  the  most  holy,  stainless,  highly 
blessed  and  glorious  Lady,  the  Mother  of 
God,  and  Ever-virgin  Mary,  for  St.  John 
the  Prophet,  Fore-runner  and  Baptist,  the 
holy,  glorious  and  illustrious  Apostles,  for 
Saint  N whose  memory  we  also  cele- 
brate, and  for  all  Thy  Saints,  through  whose 
prayers,  O  God,  look  favorably  upon  us." 

We  may  supplement  this  account  of  the 
formal  doctrines  of  the  Orthodox  with  some 
extracts  dealing  with  popular  practice.     Mr. 

153 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Athelston  Riley  says,  "  I  may  here  say,  in 
passing,  that  to  the  Easterns  the  idea  that 
many  Anglicans  hold  that  the  Blessed  Virgin 
and  the  Saints  cannot  hear  us  when  we  ask 
them  to  intercede  for  us,  appears  .  .  .  too  un- 
christian and  materialistic  to  be  even  so 
much  as  discussed.  Just  as  if  the  God  in 
Whom  '  We  live  and  move  and  have  our  be- 
ing '  could  not  make  the  Saints  hear  us  quite 
as  easily  as  He  is  able  to  make  our  voices 
intelligible  to  one  another  in  ordinary  con- 
versation. Moreover  they  believe  that  if  it 
had  not  been  His  will  that  this  communion 
of  prayer  between  the  living  and  departed 
should  exist,  then  the  Church  which  is  His 
Body  and  in  which  His  Spirit  dwells  would 
not  have  permitted  and  encouraged  such 
prayers."  ^^ 

In  regard  to  the  Russians'  attitude  toward 
the  Departed,  the  Invocation  of  Saints  "  is 
practiced  throughout  the  Orthodox  com- 
munion, but  with  important  qualifications. 
It  is  taught  that  the  Saints  themselves  are 
only  saved  by  grace,  and  therefore  we  cannot 
be  helped  by  their  merits  but  only  by  their 

82Riley^  Birkbeck  and  the  Russian  Church,  p.  96, 
Note. 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

prayers.  Further,  the  Saints  and  even 
Blessed  Mary  herself,  are  prayed  for  in  the 
Liturgy.  The  Communion  of  Saints  is  a 
reality  to  the  Russian.  He  is  united  with 
them  in  spirit,  separated  only  in  body.  He 
asks  them  to  pray  for  him  as  simply  and 
naturally  as  we  desire  each  other's  prayers, 
for  the  Saints  are  his  personal  friends. 
Nor  is  this  invocation  confined  solely  to 
canonized  saints.  In  just  the  same  way  a 
little  child  commends  itself  to  the  loving  in- 
tercessions of  its  departed  mother."  ^^ 

This  last  point  of  the  invocation  of  their 
own  beloved  dead  is  further  illustrated  as 
follows :  "  The  separation  between  the 
visible  and  the  invisible  world  seems  to  be 
non-existent.  You  may  hear  a  son  who  has 
that  day  prayed  for  his  mother's  soul  at  her 
grave  intreat  her  together  with  the  holy 
Mother  of  God  and  the  Saints,  to  pray  for 
him  before  he  goes  to  bed  that  night.  I 
have  seen  in  one  of  the  cemeteries  which  sur- 
round Moscow  a  newly  engaged  couple  hav- 
ing a  service  for  the  dead  said  at  their  par- 
ents' grave,  and  immediately  afterwards 
have  heard  them  asking  them  to  pray  to  God 

**  Bishop,  Religion  in  Russia,  p.  35. 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

for  a  blessing  on  their  marriage,  and  I  sub- 
sequently found  this  custom  as  common  as 
possible."  ^* 

Mr.  Headlam  tells  us,  "  Often  when  a 
child  who  has  lost  his  mother  is  praying,  he 
may  be  heard  adding  her  name  to  those  of 
the  other  saints  whom  he  asks  to  pray  for 
him.  Mutual  prayer  of  the  dead  for  the 
living,  and  of  the  living  for  the  dead,  as  of 
both  for  the  whole  Church,  is  to  the  Russian 
the  bond  which  links  together  the  Church 
in  one  Communion  of  Saints."  He  goes  on 
to  quote  from  a  poem  by  Khomiakoff,  on  his 
dead  children: 

**  Dear  children,  at  that  same  still  midnight  do 
ye, 
As  once  I  prayed  for  you,  now  in  turn  pray 
for  me; 
Me  who  loved  well  the  cross  on  your  foreheads 
to  trace ; 
Now  commend  me  in  turn  to  the  mercy  and 
grace 
Of  our  gracious  and  merciful  God."  ^^ 

8*  Birkbeck,  Lectures  on  the  Russian  Church,  p.  54. 
85  Headlam,    Teaching    of    the    Russian    Church, 
p.  20. 

156 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

Those  who  are  eager  for  the  unity  of 
Christendom  must  feel  that  there  is  a  group 
of  facts  with  which  they  must  be  prepared 
to  deal.  Both  the  Greek  and  the  Latin 
Churches  are  so  firmly  grounded  in  a  belief 
in  the  intimacy  of  our  relations  with  the 
Dead  that  it  is  inconceivable  that  they  should 
ever  give  it  up,  so  intimately  is  their  whole 
spiritual  life  intertwined  with  it.  They  to- 
gether represent  by  far  the  greater  part  of 
Christendom,  and  this  the  most  spiritually 
intelligent  part.  We  of  the  Anglican  com- 
munion are  equally  with  them  committed  in 
theory  to  the  practice  of  the  Invocation  of 
the  Dead.  We  claim  to  stand  upon  the 
platform  of  the  Catholic  Creeds  —  of  the 
Christian  religion  as  stated  by  the  Church  of 
the  Conciliar  period.  Alas!  we  have  fallen 
far  behind  our  professed  belief  in  the  matter 
of  practice.  This  failure  on  our  part  is  not 
only  a  spiritual  disaster  but  a  bar  to  the 
unity  of  Christendom.  There  was  published 
in  1904  a  set  of  observations  on  the  Ameri- 
can Prayer  Book  which  represent  a  report 
drawn  up  and  presented  to  the  Holy  Synod. 
The  question  was  whether  Anglican  congre- 
gations going  over  to  the  Orthodox  Church 

157 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

could  be  permitted  to  continue  the  use  of 
the  Book  of  Common  Prayer.  The  com- 
mittee was  of  the  opinion  that  certain 
changes  should  be  insisted  on,  among  others 
that  "  Into  all  the  services  in  general,  prayers 
must  be  inserted  addressed  to  the  Blessed 
Mother  of  God,  to  Angels  and  Saints,  with 
the  glorification  and  invocation  of  them."  *^ 


XXI 

Any  one  who  has  entered  into  the  enjoy- 
ment of  his  privilege  as  a  member  of  Christ 
to  communion  with  all  the  other  members  of 
the  Body  has  found  a  vast  expansion  of  his 
spiritual  outlook,  and  a  glorious  enrichment 
of  his  life  in  Christ.  When  we  have  shaken 
off  the  spiritual  selfishness  which  thinks  only 
of  the  relation  of  God  to  our  own  souls,  and 
our  expanding  thought  and  prayers  have  em- 
braced all  the  company  of  heaven,  from 
Blessed  Mary,  Ever-virgin  Mother  of  God, 
to  the  last  baptized  baby  whom  our  Lord  has 
gathered  to  Himself,   then  we  realize  the 

^^Alcuin  Club  Trach,  No.  12,  p.  35. 

158 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

meaning  of  the  Orthodox  theologians  who 
define  the  Church  as  "  Faith  and  love  as  an 
organism."  The  Communion  of  Saints  is 
the  mutual  exercise  of  love.  We  are 
privileged  to  feel  that  death  has  not  cast  any 
shadow  athwart  that  love,  but  has  deepened 
and  gladdened  it.  The  belief  that  those 
whom  we  have  loved  are  still  alive  some- 
where in  God's  universe,  but  are  cut  off  from 
us  save  in  memory,  may  give  rise  to  noble 
thoughts  of  them;  but  they  are  always 
thoughts  tinged  with  sadness  —  such  sad- 
ness as  we  feel  even  in  Matthew  Arnold's 
beautiful  lines  in  ''Rugby  Chapel f' 

O  strong  soul,  by  what  shore 
Tarriest  thou  now?     For  that  force, 

Surely,  has  not  been  left  vain! 
Somewhere,  surely,  afar, 

In  the  sounding  labor-house  vast 
Of  being,  is  practised  that  strength. 

Zealous,  beneficent,  firm. 

The  Catholic  faith  has  got  rid  of  that  note 
of  limitation  —  got  rid  of  it  because  we  have 
not  been  separated  from  our  Dead.  Their 
names  are  on  our  lips  with  the  same  fre- 
quency, with  the  same  passion  of  love,  as  in 

159 


ON  PRAYERS  TO  THE  DEAD 

their  lifetime.  Our  souls  reach  out  to  com- 
munion with  them,  and  find  it  at  the  altar, 
and  in  our  private  prayers.  We  ask  the  aid 
of  their  intercession,  of  the  intercessions  not 
only  of  Blessed  Mary  and  all  Saints,  but  of 
the  parent  or  child  from  whom  we  have  just 
been  visibly  separated  by  death.  We  ask 
their  prayers,  not  because  we  doubt  of  them, 
but  because  the  asking  is  the  expression  of 
our  love.  Love  needs  to  manifest  itself  — 
to  ask  and  be  asked.  We  know  what  the 
answer  to  the  question  is  — 

My  name  on  earth  was  ever  in  thy  prayer, 
And  wilt  thou  never  utter  it  in  heaven? 

Where  life  in  Christ  is  love,  love  also  is 
unending  action.  These  are  not  only  our 
convictions  —  they  are  our  experiences,  ex- 
periences that  we  would  lead  all  to  share. 

O  doubting  heart !     Dost  thou  not  know  thy 
love, 
Across  the  awful  silentness  of  death 
Smiles  at  thee  through  the  dark? 

THE   END 
1 60 


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